Disturbingly realistic

A review of Somalatha Subasinghe's 'Vikurthi':

by Dilshan Boange

"Tuition-bio, tuition-pure, chemistry, physics, chemistry, bio, tuition bio..." was a chorus I heard first in the early 90s on TV. Back then I only knew it as a song from a stage drama. But at the Lionel Wendt last week, watching Vikurthi, the Sinhala play written by the late Somalatha Subasinghe, I was served a wholly realistic perspective about how education has been perverted to serve the sole purpose of overambitious parents driven to seek upward social mobility at the expense of their children's emotional wellbeing.

The torment through 'tuition' in the life of schoolchildren is nothing new in Sri Lanka. Caught up in the rat race of West influenced/driven consumerism and hyper competitiveness, one of the main casualties are children whose childhood is tethered to a 'strive to win' attitude in an ever increasingly competitive battle to get the 'best deal' 'life' has to offer. A pivotal trump card in this game is university education, which is a very crucial upward mobility factor for the masses.

Vikurthi, which generally translates to English as 'deformed' is a well thought-out theatrical critique of where Sri Lankan society is heading in the aftermath of the open economy that began after 1977. It shows the unwholesome 'obsession' some parents have to make their children doctors or engineers. It shows the price at which parental aspirations for the child may come true, and questions what really constitutes happiness in life. Running in the veins of this play are the drilling questions what is the worth of education today? And what is the role of education in social mobility? Does happiness rely entirely on achieving material success as mainstream society sees it?

Hilda played convincingly by Kaushalya Fernando represents the typical, ambitious mother who desperately desires a 'better life' for her children and determinedly pushes her eldest daughter, Priyangani, brought to life endearingly by Geetha Alahakoon, to qualify and gain entry to the medical faculty to become a doctor. Hilda as shown by her actions and the criticisms at her by her own husband, played commendably by Prasannajith Abeysuriya, is a quintessential player in the game of 'keeping up with the Joneses'.

Priyangani's predicament is not particular to her alone. The rich kid Jagath, and Saranapala the poor village lad who gets a scholarship to Royal College Colombo, but fails to reach the height of prosperity everyone expected of him, are all hapless victims of the perceptions society holds about what university education should serve as a 'self serving purpose'.

Tuition marketplace

Some of the notable aspects of the creativity in the narrative craft in this 'partly musical play', which is ripe with song and dance, can be scenes like the 'tuition market place'. It very cheekily and wittily, captures through rhythm the sound of singular 'labels' assigned to education for the purpose of being marketplace products.

The musicality of it is striking and contains an element of tasteful humour although made merely of words and is delivered in the simplicity of a form where 'subject labels' alone are like song 'lyrics'.

Do people become artists by birth or by choice? I have often asked that question from myself and this play nuances that question strikingly. Priyangani and her friends are all inclined towards the pleasures of the arts, but except for Sampath, played commendably by Mayura Perera, whose mother is a dancing teacher, there is little parental encouragement to pursue their heart's desire after finishing schooling. Education should not be torture but enjoyable. However for some, attending Medical College or studying engineering could be at the cost of abandoning their heart's desire of engaging in the arts. In the face of the 'prestige' and economic gain that professions like medicine and engineering provide, what is the worth of an education in the arts is a question that is assiduously highlighted in the play.

The scene where Priyangani, after being forced to retake the A/L exam on her mother's insistence, is strapped to a regimental study schedule and trapped in a state of mental anguish and battered by mounting exam pressure, is shown being attacked by demonic personae symbolising the A/L syllabi that wrecks her psychologically. This is a pivotal point to understand the 'internal' disfiguration or deformation that takes place in the artistically inclined carefree soul that is Priyangani, unbeknown to the world outside.

The final outcome is a tragedy. I shall not do the disservice to the theatregoer yet to watch this play, by stating the ending and the form of the tragic finale. If you are a parent with fledglings who are yet to spread their wings and discover their own aptitudes and talents, and if you enjoy theatre and believe theatre can teach us something reflectively of what we are as 'society', then, Vikurthi will offer you food for thought. On the matter of the overall performance and production, the acting was commendable from all the payers in general, while the lighting deserves some special applause for being well devised, managed and effective to symbolise the moments of derangement in the students' psyches.

Vikurthi although a play from the 'last century' has much to offer the parental generation of today on whether an unending cycle of maniacal consumerist goals should be continued and engrained in each succeeding generation of children. After all, the generation that was at the threshold of adulthood at the time this play first came out is now at the helm and parentally positioned to steer the future of their children.