An entertaining Sinhala farce

by Dilshan Boange

On August 23rd popular actor of the screen and stage Sampath Jayaweera presented Jodu Jodu, a Sinhala play which can be said is an adaptation of the French playwright Marc Camoletti's farce Pyjamas Pour Six, which has its English translation titled Don't Dress for Dinner. The title of Jayaweera's play if translated to English would read as 'Couples, Couples,' and would be a verbatim translation reflecting a flavour of the Sinhala vernacular.

Jodu Jodu is clearly an adaptation as opposed to a translation. One may suppose that the setting is somewhere out of Colombo although not expressly stated in the text of the play. From the clothing and that fact that the house had once been part of a farm facility, one may deduce that the story is set in some cool hilly climes.

A point to note is that three of the characters carry non-Sinhala names (I would not by any means say non-Sri Lankan given the fact that there are many Sri Lankans who have western names as both Christian/first names and surnames) as Tony, Robin and Lorraine who form the initial basis of the adulterous scheme of chaos to move forward with its spirals of 'mistaken identity' bound comedic misadventures.

Stagecraft consisted of somewhat a minimalist setup which clearly was not meant to project the Chekhovian realist theatre mode. Acting was overall good and appears to cater in its vein of theatricality to the seekers of popular comedy.

Generally one can say Jodu Jodu is a French farce well played as an adaption for Sinhala theatre audiences.

A notable feature of the script of this play is that it presents colloquial vernacular reflective of contemporary speech patterns in Sri Lanka where English 'code mixing' in Sinhala speech / dialogue is prevalent, or at least spreading wider into general usage. English 'code mixing' as opposed to 'code switching', is where English words and phrases are inserted into a principally Sinhala dialogue without rupturing the syntactical base of what is communicated as Sinhala speech. The play thus delivers a colloquial texture as opposed to 'literariness' through its text.

Sitting under the gentle darkness occupying seat Q-7, I noted that voice modulation and projection from the players was good and nothing short of what is to be expected of the professionals who mounted the boards to perform Jodu Jodu. To the credit of the cast no sign of opening night jitters was detected.

The drawback that I can speak of in this play is the musical element of a song that was played as a recording over the audio system which lacked clarity. And also the 'entry music' for certain characters were cheesy and in my opinion did a disservice to the play. Does every 'popular market' stage play have to be smacked with a song and a musical number? Do audiences necessarily require these elements that seem to perform no real function nor offer remarkable facets of entertainment to enthral viewers? Those elements added nothing really spectacular in my opinion.

Performed by an ensemble of able actors Jodu Jodu will surely not disappoint the Sinhala theatregoer who seeks the thrills of rib tickling comedy. I have no doubt that what Jayaweera has offered will enjoy success with mainstream Sinhala theatregoers.