One one things

It’s not very often in Sri Lanka that we get good quality original live entertainment. So when there is something going down ppl tend to get fairly excited. Yesterday I had almost an overdose, two activities in one evening! Started with the SL v Singapore rugby match at Longden place. I’m not a major rugby fan but i enjoy watching it and enjoy the odd game of tap. I went for the match with my ardent rugby fan buddy, unfortunately mixed up the kick off time, thought it was 5 when it was 4.30. But luckily the first half hour was bad for SL and as soon as we entered the ground after a BIGASS queue we got our first try. Overall it was great fun, SL played some superb rugby in between some rather clumsy looking fumbles. The odd thing was that the Singapore team had rather a lot of..new zealanders :S Was tempted to shout “all black reject” when one of them passed by but it was much too unbecoming of a hospitable Sri Lankan fan (i mean, i could have taken him out if things got messy, not that i’m scared or anything). Within those 80 mins we managed to shout ourselves hoarse, mainly things like duwapang! umpire hora! come ooon! and yeaaaaaaah! heh nothing like a good sports event to get the adrenaline pumping, can’t wait for the west indians to come to town.

So we finished at the rugby by 6.30 and had to be at the Wendt by 7.30, cutting it fine. We were going to watch Elizabeth, Almost by chance a woman. I was expecting good things from this play for 2 reasons, 1) stage light(fright) and magic(tragic) have produced some stuff that i have really enjoyed, like the abridged shakespeare stuff and romeo and juliet (despite the excessive legnth). 2) The plot looked to have great potential to be extremely funny if it was done properly. The evening didn’t start particularly well though, we got 2 seconds late (i’m not exaggerating..ok maybe just a bit, make it 5 mins) and we walked in and the girl at the door says “sorry sir, can’t let you in after it started, you’ll have to go to the balcony”. shit. wank. bugger.
I had paid 650 bucks, booked 2 weeks in advance to get seats in the first tier. “I can let you in during the interval” she said..fine fine, we went up and then the clown at the balcony entrance removed our ticket tags, meaning we have no way of proving our seat numbers after the interval. So the girl who was taking us up had to come back tell the balcony entrance clown that she’ll sort it out, poor thing, she was looking quite stressed. Got to the balcony at the start of the letter to George Bush. It was very funny so my mood improved. And then we see 3 buggers going and sitting in the front row downstairs just minutes after we had been refused! Got pissed off again. Another fellow came and told us that there are 2 seats available downstairs and to follow him. So we went, and ran into an important looking guy who had a pony tail, also looking very stressed. He said sorry, can’t let anyone in. Now properly ticked off, we’re missing the play, even if its just standing in the balcony! so back up to the balcony we went, fuming. Then within 5 mins another fellow comes up, talks to my friend, looks at me pats my shoulder and says to come down that the seats are ok. Ran into the pony tail again and he had changed his tone, apologised to us and took us in.

Finally was able to sit down and enjoy the play. Unfortunately the play left a lot to be desired by stage light standards. I mean, there were parts that were very very funny. The letter to george bush was superb (if the whole P.T.O bit was a flogged a tad too much), anuruddha’s acting was super, as was ifaz (bit too much slapstick though), Martha and Marsh. I loved Mama Zaza’s (not sure if thats the spelling) miming but a lot of her was overcooked. The problem was that there was too much slapstick, too many obvious innuendos and i didn’t like how they just swore to make ppl laugh. Swearing is fantastic, great part of language, but its much funnier when its used in a more subtle, tongue in cheek way rather than just putting the word fuck in a sentence to make ppl laugh. Ok good example, the part during the Bush letter when the lights went out and Ifaz was giving the finger to the cameraman not realising the lights had come on, funny, clever, not crude.

But overall the acting was very good, as was the script and the adaptation to Sri Lanka. The parallels drawn with CBK were cleverly done and subtle enough to make it enjoyable. Thing with stagelight is they don’t need to add in all sorts of slapstick and don’t need to abuse the english language in order to be funny, and the fact that they did do that made it a bit disappointing. But in SL we’re starved for this sort of thing so how to complain? as my friend said “something to laugh at is better than nothing.” Considering watching “wun shOt” next week. (tongue firmly in cheek).