Revisiting the Pereras

The cast of Keeping Up with the Pereras 

By Shiran Illanperuma

Fresh off of his hysterical take on Ray Cooney’s ‘Run for your Wife,’ Indu Dharmasena is diving into his archive and brushing the dust off a play he never felt he perfected – ‘Keeping Up with the Pereras’.

Indu is prolific, to say the least. With a vast backlog of original plays, demand to write more as well as opportunities to do adaptations of other plays, it’s noteworthy that Indu has elected to revisit an older creation.

Indu recalls the first night doing the play: “A friend of mine called immediately after and said it was fine but asked me to shorten the beginning which was just a long conversation between two characters.”

Taking heed, Indu, along with his wife Sanwada Dharmasena, tweaked the script over the next few performances trying to find just the right balance between the characters and dialogue.

Says Sanwada, “Indu felt like he sorted it out to a certain extent but kept saying we need to restructure it.”

“Since I’ve been wanting to restructure it from the first run, I felt that now was a good time to revisit it and perform something closer to my vision,” adds Indu.

As a playwright, Indu’s niche is his sharp and satirical take on Colombo high society, something that couldn’t be more evident in ‘Keeping Up with the Pereras’.

The play itself wraps up all the familiar tropes of Colombo elites – the obsessions with money, property, status, appearances and of course gossip – and rolls them up into unabashed lampooning of the greener side of Sri Lankan society.

First performed in 2013, ‘Keeping Up with the Pereras’ follows the Fernandos – an upper middle class couple that move into a new house in a swanky part of Colombo next door to the obscenely wealthy Perera family. In the ensuing narrative, things go awry when Dulanthi Fernando played by Sanwada Dharmasena becomes obsessed with matching the opulent lifestyle of Apeksha Perera played by Lanka Wijesena.

For Indu the impulse to satirise the lives of the upper middle class seems to come naturally and were evident from his first works.

“The very first play that I did was called ‘A Convenient Marriage’ and it was about high society and people gossiping or whatever. The second one I did was ‘All or Nothing’. They were all based on Georgette Heyer novels. I loved reading her books because those characters can easily blend into our society,” said Indu.

Of course, Indu’s knack for satire means that he often lifts people and scenarios from his own life and pens them into his plays. Something that has had awkward ramifications in real life.

“Most of my characters are not based on a person but a combination of people. Sometimes I find it very amusing because some of the people that I have based the character on will come up and say, ‘Hey that person was hilarious no?’ “After the first few plays some of my friends used to say, ‘My God don’t say anything in front of him or else it’ll be on stage’. So then I realised at least I’ve managed to stop some of them from gossiping!” quips Indu.

Sanwada chimes in: “You could say that’s Indu’s social responsibility project, stopping gossip one person at a time.”

‘Keeping Up with the Pereras’ will be performed at the Lionel Wendt Theatre on the 6, 7 and 8 May. The shows on 6 and 7 May are presented by the Kingswood Union Colombo to aid school projects. The National Council for Mental Health will present the show on 8 May.

-Pix by Lasantha Kumara