Review

Widows made a point, but...

By Alya Henry

In the last few years The Workshop Players charmed Colombo theatre buffs with lively productions such as 'Les Miserables', 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun' and other performances. This year they staged Arial Dorfmann's play Widows which went on the boards at Lionel Wendt, variously sponsored by Keells Super, Crosscut, The Sunday Times, Mid-week Mirror, TNL TV and TNL Radio and directed by Ferris Kamardeen and Tracy Holsinger.

Widows is a powerful , serious political play. It portrays a group of women whose men are taken away by various means, arrests, abduction, kidnapping, etc. They never return, except as dead bodies floating down the river. In recent history this seems a familiar state of affairs in many countries, as the narrator said.

"My country? does it matter? Do I really have to name that country? Among all the countries - the ones you see on television and the many you don't where a few men decide on matters of life and death for the rest of the people."

The stage for Widows was stark, murky, bereft of decor: all was dark and dismal, mists rose from the river, swirling around a group of village women in some country, torn by civil war, making them appear like ghosts..

Things happen to this sombre community overrun by an offensive military presence. Men disappear - abducted or kidnapped by the military. The women, left behind, fend for themselves, while waiting by the river for their men to return. They are daily harassed, hassled and manipulated, living at the mercy of the men in power. Life is cheap and irrelevant here. Destruction of peace and family life seems to be the target. Everything is sad and desolate, no fun at all.

The women ask questions but the military give evasive answers. When dead bodies are fished out of the river, each woman assumes it is the dead body of her man, and claims it. But the authorities have other plans - the bodies are spirited away and buried by decree. One woman's husband returns, only to reveal a broken shell of the man he was .

No matter how engrossing a play is, three hours of sitting in a not so comfortable seat is no fun. The producers could have tightened up the play - here and there - for emphasis. Forget the accessories.

The narrator's first appearance was enough. Later he popped upon various corners of the hall, a veritable Jack-in-the-Box . His role was ambiguous, and strained, his cynical talks clouded the main issues. The play needed complete frontal focus if the dream-like effect of the women at the river was to be accepted.

A thought provoking play such as Widows could have more visual support to counteract the heaviness, with dramatic shapes, or colour contrasts. If the play was produced in a country where only minor conflicts occur, then the hammering down of the vital points would be rational. But to Colombo audiences, repetition of things familiar was tedious. A long winded play with smart asides and cute philosophies is banal: a sharp line or a hint is all that's necessary to make the point absolutely clear.

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