Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Saturday, 20 August 2022 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Purr-fect vehicle for change – pity the stand-up comedy was merely funny whereas a scratch or two of satire could have really set the stage for a sea-change into something rich and strange
By W.H. Iskers
In these tough times, Freddy may be just what the doctor ordered if you’re feeling down in the dumps. Of course, you have to be wealthy enough to afford the price of admission, have a healthy sense of humour and not care too much that the joke is on you – even if Feroze Kamardeen rubs that in a bit more than usual.
As usual in scripts essayed by this impresario, there is more than a smattering of good one-liners. For instance: “Galle Face got a brand-new city asking the Chinese to come, Galle Face also got a whole new village asking the President to go!”
There are also plenty of cleverly pastiched songs that describe the state – nay, plight – of the nation in recent times… and got the laughs all right.
When the audience joins in on the chorus (the familiar refrain of “kaputu-kaak-kaak-kaak”) of one of these borrowed ditties dressed up in the author’s words, one performer invites the audience to give themselves a hand. Stop… joke’s on you, mate!
And so Freddy 5: Goodbye Nation tickled the fancy of fat-cats content to satisfy their thirst for only a belly laugh. When, far better if the playwright-auteur had grown up a little, since his Pusswedilla days. This outing could have been used to savage and/or salvage the sad condition of Sri Lanka under a rotten regime and more of the same to come by the looks of it?
I mean to say, there’s only so much of Adin Mathitharan’s soapy jokes on shampoos, and pills and bills, that are palatable to a bankrupt nation.
Of course, in-between the dry jokes, Freddy nods to the sorry state of some of our national establishments. For example: re. the GMOA… “Because of them, we’re the only country in the world where the lawyers get more respect than the doctors.” Sad? True!
It’s not all finger-pointing and sending up of toffee-nosed brown-nosers who propped up the former regime.
Through the painful device of a grand-aunt who fell into a coma in Jaffna circa 2006, we’re taken through the odious comparison of prices in the wartime north and the Gotabaya-era south.
It’s so bad that at one point, the recovering elderly kinswoman of Adin asks: “Are you sure we won the war?”
She also asks: “Which idiot President appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister?”
And on hearing that things are really bad under the Rajapaksas, the grand dame is said to groan: “It looks like whoever is in power is implementing Prabhakaran’s policies” (which include high taxes, shortage of goods and services, corruption in their supply and distribution, etc.).
On some nights of Freddy 5’s fortnight outing, it took a while to get audiences warmed up.
In fact, at one point, Nisal Katipearachchi had to quip: “You can laugh harder; no white van will come… no fuel, no?”
There was a pointed comparison and contrast made between the fuel queues of today, and the fools who lined up to vote for Gota…
“He won the war, cleaned up The Arcade, refurbished the race course, finished the war, beautified the walking-tracks, won the war,” noted Nisal. “We voted for Gota and ended up with Ranil – that must be the worst feeling in the world, no? To start a 69 with someone and finish it with someone else…”
Yes, the suggestive belly laughs were all there. Except it’s not funny anymore, is it?
With that said, it was a good stage tactic to play the ‘confession’ of former Finance Minister Ali Sabry in the House re. ‘mistakes made’ by the previous regime.
It was a welcome challenge by young Katipearachchi to ask the PC ex-politico now-reinstated as Foreign Minister if the historical mistakes don’t have corresponding judgments?
Nisal also warbled: “We have too many theories, too many strategies, too much awesomeness to be anyone’s sidekicks – we are not Piglet, we are Winnie the Pooh; we are not Dr. Watson, we’re Sherlock Holmes; we’re not Robin, we’re Batman… but we’re robbin’ a bit also, no?”
Feroze was always the master of the bad pun that brought out the worst in compliant audiences. But this is stand-up comedy, brother – not satire… so belt up and buckle down, eh?
Typically clever cross-references also abounded. Nisal on neighbouring India: “I’m not going call you ‘Big Brother’ because that has nasty connotations, no – anyway, that’s what our governments are constantly trying to do: take us back to 1984…” – this was a reference to the nanny state ‘watching you’ (and doing more than mere surveillance under an excessive Emergency).
This player also found it ironic that “there is no greater insult than for a Sri Lankan overseas to be mistaken for an Indian”. That got a knowing acknowledgment from patriotic audiences.
“Are you Indian?”
“No, I’m from Sri Lanka.”
“Oh, and where is that?”
“It’s a beautiful island in the Indian Ocean…”
“Oh, so you are from India after all?!”
Nisal ploughs on: “With all that’s going on (rupee depreciation, dollar shortage, bankruptcy, etc.), there’s still nothing worse than being mistaken for an Indian: I mean… I may come from a country that’s been driven into the ground, but I’m not from India!”
The performer uses this as a precursor to launch into an attention speech about the loss of our quality of life, and food and energy security, etc. Also, to critique the MPs who gave up only their salary – despite all their other perks – and not looking like they “missed a deal…” – er, a meal… cheap shot…
In similar vein: “People who voted for Gota never thought it would go from a ‘69’ to a ‘DP’ – below the belt, eh!
“All the ‘69ers’ who voted for Gota… on ideological grounds, right-wing tendencies, supremacist mentality, his ability to deliver the goods – they got lied to and duped, no, when all they wanted was a ‘system change’?”
Might I respectfully suggest that part of such a sea-change would be if and when stand-up comedy underwent a similar transformation and emerged as biting satire that could challenge and subvert?
Nisal did make a point, though: that he was not there to “make fun of anybody, ridicule or scold” – but to ask us to take a closer look at ourselves as a polity, getting “flowered” (they paraphrased it) time and time again.
For this, many thanks. More of the same! And maybe less crude jokes that don’t resonate with the truly desperate milieu we live in today?
Dilini Perera was on the ball. “What is the point?” she asked upfront. “Don’t blame Gotabaya, turn off the bloody lights!” That is the point.
From then on, it was her saying goodbye in a long-drawn-out manner.
Of course, it was painfully funny to see a mirror being held up to ourselves in ‘the long goodbye’.
And the usual knowing giggles about school foibles – although STC got off lightly this year…
Usually, there is a lot of rib-tickling homophobia by Freddy stalwarts; but no, Perera reserved her choler for the lasses from Ladies’ (even that was mild, BTW).
But it was good to see – in a stand-up about declining standards in societal mores – those schools admissions that continue to see, year after year, egregious cheating. Most of it was focussed on Royal (e.g. addresses after admission tend to change from Horton Place to Hokandara, Rosmead Place to Ratmalana, Jawatte to Jaela).
The number of S. Thomas’ and Royal Colleges around the island also took up a lot of her time…
Fair game also were the ‘Roy-Tho’, attitudes of Joe-Petes towards it, and the laissez-faire approach to just about anything of the Sri Lankan Burgher community.
But while Dilini Perera, a.k.a. Ms. Fox, was declaiming “if there’s one thing we can learn from the Burghers, it’s how not to take offence at any bloody thing,” there was David Blacker – often loud and proud on social media on a plethora of issues – looking distinctly unimpressed at the generalisation.
I won’t say ‘pissed’ but it was clear he was not pleased. Oh well, there’s no pleasing everybody. I wasn’t the happiest cat in the e-house, either. Is comedy the need of this desperate hour?
The PTA got a good slap across the face too, and in so cheerful a way – disguised as a comment on the tendency of drunken uncles at parties to pontificate on the law and constitution – that it had the audience silently smirking into their drinks rather than the usual belly laughs at the legal and drunken communities’ expense.
The role-play of a police unit being taught how to treat media who would expose the nakedness of our erstwhile governors was instructive and ticklish – into the bargain, exploring how the government prioritised the use of dollars to import tear-gas at a time when millions were facing severe hardships.
Some of our senior leaders got short shrift, predictably. “When they were together, Ranil and Gota were like the binary code… Ranil commanded the confidence of one; Gota commanded the confidence of none!”
But sorry; saying that “Mahinda is talking like Darth Vader” is hardly a worthwhile throwaway line…
And cute “Cuckoo-boy” references to young past-and-possibly-future ruling party politicians or saying of an inveterate tweep that “Namal didn’t tweet” doesn’t pass muster as a critique – it’s passé, blasé, etc.
“Here’s a little tip when it comes to comedy: people are supposed to be laughing with you, not at you!” Freddy, your slip is showing.
“The goodbye is taking far too long!” (Although way shorter than FK’s usual marathons!)
I can relate.
Stand-up is not about song and dance or recycled jokes alone.
Satire bites better when it prescribes rather than only describes.
The past is prologue. The present is murkier; try to throw some light on that in future, please?
It takes wit to get it right and funny.
But it takes true genius to go beyond the obvious and suggest solutions rather than rehash mistakes made while laughing all the way to the bank…
Turn off the lights!
Reality bites – “If you expect parliamentarians to step up to the plate and do the right thing, your expectations are too high… If you expect a bunch of stand-up comedians to be funnier than a troop of monkeys who keep getting elected time and again, your expectations are way too high!”
You said it, Freddy!
(The writer is an old-school ticket-buying member of civil society who is passionate about public performances speaking truth to power.)
