Review:

A translation tuned to our tastes

By Dilshan Boange

What distinguishes an ‘adaptation’ from a ‘translation’ when it comes to theatre? In my understanding the former would involve the original script to be made to suit the local audience not only in terms of language translation but also cultural nuances and even ‘resetting’ some of the scenario in a more localized, context of names and places that the audience would find more identifiable with what is familiar to them. An adaptation could also be a scenario of transpoting the plot and storyline in a different time and place as different to what is in the original script.

A ‘translation’, however, would in this regard be more built on the premise of delivering the story, the plot to the local audience in a language that is alien to the original script but native to the audience to which it is translated.

The cultural, historical context and the playwright’s direction would not undergo any radical changes to displace the ‘cultural identity’ which the work projects in the case of a translation.

On the February 14 Vijitha Bandara presented at the John de Silva Auditorium the famous play Fiddler on the roof as a slightly edited version of the Sinhala translation titled Vaadakaya vahala uda by the late Nanda Vithana was done in the 1980s. The play was staged as an entry to the State Drama Festival 2012/2013.

I knew the original to be a Broadway production and that there was a Sinhala translation of it done some time ago.

And so as I was about to have my first experience of this story unfold on stage. I was teeming with curiosity to see what exactly would come alive on the boards as a Sinhala translation of the famed play.

I knew the original is a musical, and part of the curiosity was to see how the pivotal factor of ‘musicality’ would work in this rendition. All I knew of the original work in respect of it being a musical is that the song If I was a rich man is from Fiddler on the Roof.

A faithful translation

The fiddle playing and the rhythmic feet stomping in a rural dance form were elements that established the play’s threading as a musical and the clearly visible manner and style of the dancing which included an element of Russian folk dancing in the scene at the local tavern where the protagonist meets a potential suitor for his eldest daughter, showed that the objective of the translator and the director had been to deliver as much as possible a faithful translation without diluting the cultural essence of the original script.

The costumes and style of attire should also be commended as being rather credible in creating the visual components that contributed to a foreign play being delivered in our local tongue. One of the notable ‘standouts’ was the attire of the university graduate, the stranger who takes up being personal tutor to the protagonists daughters in exchange for bed and board.

His turquoise like hued shirt worn over a bright red shirt did not complement the motif that was captured through the rest of the characters despite the fact the footwear he had on was very much in line with what was worn by the other males.

Perhaps the director intended to make him, through the choice of attire, appear different and more ‘urbane’ since he does in fact possess a much higher level of learning and understanding about matters that from the political landscape of the times.

However on the matter of costumes while the ensemble of characters in general had attire that gave the feeling of a depiction of a setting in rural Tsarist Russia, the character of the university graduate was garbed in a manner that was more identifiable with dress motifs and vogues that are not too alien to our present times.

The experience of theatre in my understanding of it, isn’t simply grasping and gauging the ideas presented through the story, but the whole experience of how the viewer bonds with the performance unfolding on the boards; the larger context of how the performance fares as live action for a living audience. Theatre in this sense has a facet of being a collective experience owing to the nature of the medium being one where the audience feels the presence of the actors as physical, living beings no different from them in their material constitutions, but having assumed the mould of personae ‘larger than life’ which is where one may propound the initial point at which the ‘aesthetic’ is kindled to create a bond between the enlivened performer in the spotlight and the observant viewer seated in the soft darkness.

The uncontrollable externality

At least for the first half of the show’s duration a continuous drumming session that took place just outside the auditorium premises posed a disturbance in no small negligible form and did very much rain on the parade of the performers.

It must be noted that the actors did not show a demeanour of being deterred during the persistence of the disturbance which was of course beyond their control. In all fairness to the production I for one in my mind did my best to add greater effort to attentively grasp the dialogue which at times suffered in its projection to the rear of the auditorium due to the drumming outside. The show that unfolded on the stage deserved considerateness on the part of a viewer was what I strongly felt.

Calling them as they were heard

Some of the Russian names of the characters eluded my ears from being clearly discerned in the course of the dialogues at first due to the disturbance from outside, but latterly the names were heard better and therefore despite whatever the exact names of the characters may be in the original script I shall refer to them here in this article as I heard them as a person who was in the audience and thereby discuss the ‘performance’ as ‘a text’.

The principal character ‘Thevye’ is a ‘milk farmer’ whose poverty does not consume him into despondency due to his strong faith in God, and the belief in the need to uphold tradition. This composite of cultural cornerstones in their rural set up marks the system in which the village holds itself together. The role of Thevye was delivered very effectively by the actor who brought in a distinct Sri Lankan paternal demeanour at certain points that made the character feel as though he was almost a traditional father in our country despite the garb.

It takes talent to touch on the fine subtle points of our cultural representations which can often be bound to tones of language and physical gestures which would discreetly communicate to the viewer that beneath the makeup, the heavily laden apparel, is a Sri Lankan who has made his own cultural sensibility permeate the exterior he bears as the ‘scripted character’. The principal player in this sense didn’t theatricalise his character to the extent to seem as a Russian character speaking in fluent Sinhala. It is aspects as these in a performance that gets one thinking as to whether language alone can determine the cultural sensibility and mould of a people when they are represented.

The comical vein of Thevye’s character as portrayed in the performance seemed very apt to please our Sri Lankan tastes which seemed of a naturally flowing mode by the actor whose portrayal of a congenial, polite and courteous Russian peasant made him feel not distant to what we in our context would identify with as being the pulse of the average Sri Lankan who prides in a reputation of being hospitable and warm, taken to be in our ethos, hallmarks of a civilised people.

The manner in which the actor makes Thevye’s character flow with ease of modulating moods and manner, coursing the expressions to suit the actions he delivers and the reactions he must respond with, showed how he was very much in command of bringing the character to life credibly, balancing the primary artistic interest, that it is a Russian being portrayed in the Sinhala language.

The actor who portrayed the role of Thevye deserves a strong round of applause for his performance, which displayed his skills and talents in doing justice to the central role of a translated work.

On the subject of acting and the players who brought the ensemble of characters to life, I believe that not all of them were of an equal layer of acting ability. In my opinion the character of the university graduate who proves to be a revolutionary whose name I discerned as ‘Bertic’ did not come to life as a forceful character. Although there were moments when he did command presence on account of the script positioning him as a moment ‘to be heard’ the actor could as I saw him, develop on better vocalisation to make his character’s depth more ‘acoustically’ felt.

And from among the five daughters of Thevye although it was the eldest, whose name I heard as ‘Sydel’ who occupies the centrality on the marriage issue, it was the petite actress who performed the role of the daughter ‘Khava’ who showed possessing the more easily flowing rhythm of bringing to life her character to the stage almost unconscious of any effort.

The character of Sydel was portrayed attractively, but there were numerous instances where the need to project the expressions of the character and theatricalise it, seemed slightly ‘thrust’ at the audience. Overall I would say Sydel was delivered convincingly, however the acting talent in the female player who portrayed the character of Khava, although she occupied a less prominent place in the story stood out as one who draws the empathy of the viewer more effectively.

‘Khava’

The manner in which the actress played her character in the scenes where Khava beseeches her father to approve of her choice of marriage partner, and also the manner in which she acts the predicament of the milkmaid who gets heckled and bullied by some village boys along the road showed the player’s ability to pronounce herself to the audience when the narrative cues her to be in the spotlight. To each of the characters who played the role of a member of Thevye’s family there had to be a considerable task in terms of their ‘acting artistry’ to work on how their individual dynamics would play out next to the actor who played the father figure very powerfully.

Symbioses between actors

If one tries to outdo the central figure in a certain scene until the story narrative allows it, which could switch back and forth on the merits of the dialogues’ progression, such brashness could be detectable.

The character then would seem disharmonious in the ‘fabric of the acting’, despite an undisturbed progression of the ‘scripted words’. I feel that to each of the actresses who played the eldest three of the five daughters, who declare their choices of husbands and defied tradition to cause turbulence to the emotional being within Thevye, there was a weighty task of managing the right dose of expressions to create the credibility of the kinds of daughters the viewer would read them as –traditionally brought up girls who care much for their father’s feelings but are equally committed to realise their own hearts’ desires.

In the context of the politics of traditionalism against the need to liberate the individual, the role of a daughter is doubly burdened as being the less socially empowered gender to rebel. Make no mistake that despite the tears and the urgent imploring to the paternal pulses, each of the three eldest daughters by refusing to act in accordance with tradition represents a symbol of nonviolent rebellion.

The musical number Sirith virith (Traditions and customs) was an innovative element in the play that brought out the emphasis on the factor of ‘traditions and customs’ as pivotal to understand the outlooks ethos and simply the ‘logic’ of the people portrayed.

The musical number, while it represented in its physical stylistics a sense of the Russian, was linguistically Sinhala and thereby was a well manoeuvred part of the play in the framework of a Sinhala translation of a musical of a play meant to portray pre-soviet Russia.

The other musical number which deserves to be discussed with detail is in the ‘dream scene’ which showed a praiseworthy endeavour in stagecraft on the part of the director.

The scene where Thevye wakes up at night and tells his wife Golda that he saw the deceased ‘Parma Sarah’ warning him not to give his daughter Sydel in marriage to the widower ‘Lese wolf’ to whom ‘Parma Sarah’ was wife to when amongst the living, is one where the narrative very smoothly switches the premise of the real to blend with the surreal to theatrically narrate what Thevye begins to describe as his nightmare.

The stag, after all affords limited possibilities to the directorial vision to be brought to life unlike cinema. And keeping in mind that we are yet to see the wonders of Broadway realised in terms of Sri Lankan theatre simply due to realities of economics, the manner in which the director had employed the resources available showed a laudable design to realise the scene which clearly stood out from the rest of the play’s texture.

The stage is a place where the vision of the director and the playwright realises its materiality in the gaining of colour, form and flesh. The dream or nightmare scene where Parma Sarah accosts Thevye and in the process of the ‘grand plan’ liberates Sydel form the fate of marrying a widower as old as her own father if not possibly even older, showed how the space of the stage, when creating theatre, can become a premise which depicts or portrays the mindscape of the characters as well as their material reality.

If the nightmare had been entirely narrated by dialogue it may have been entertaining no doubt if well executed through the skills of dramatic narrative power on the part of the players, but it would not live up to a shade of what it does as a dramatised narrative with lighting and music paving the way to a vision of performance being the more emphasised objective.

Thevye wakes up screaming to Golda’s alarm that he saw Parma Sarah in the room. The protagonist then proceeds to tell his wife how in a dream he saw Golda’s late grandmother come to visit him. At this point, a very entertainingly well done, rickety old figure profusely dressed in garbs of a white bridal like fabric enters the stage slowly with the aid of a walking stick and is instantly greeted by the protagonist and his wife.

Switching between spheres

The switch from the bedroom of the material ‘landscape’ to the surreal ‘mindscape’ is done thereby. It is interesting to note how the protagonist employs the character of the late grandmother as the prophesier who forewarns of disaster if Sydel, her eldest granddaughter is given in marriage to Lese Wolf, and denied her hand in marriage to her sweetheart the humble tailor ‘Modal’ who is incidentally the choice the grandmother favours as well.

This approach clearly shows how the factor of tradition is employed to the benefit of the relief seeker –Thevye who must figure out a means to allow his daughter’s pleas to be not given in marriage to an old man as well as dissuade his wife from insisting that Lese Wolf’s proposal be accepted by Sydel.

An elder is always a repository of great foresight and wisdom in a societal setup that values traditionalism. And the ‘fact’ that in the ‘dream’ which is of course a ruse by Thevye, the ghost of Parma Sarah in a ghoulish form of terrifying ‘proportions’ appears to terrorise the poor peasant is the thrust that give credence to the grandmother’s prophesy that what is said in the dream could become true in real life. The musicality that drove the scene was very entertaining. The choral repetition of the name ‘Parma Sarah’ in haunting intonations really did set the tone and pace for the scene which also darts our comicality in the manner that Thevye reacts to the ghoul whose representation was very much, literally ‘larger than life’.

As to whether the original Broadway productions or any other theatre production of Fiddler on the roof produced in the Western world has a Parma Sarah who stands to a fantastic height of about ten feet I simply have no idea. Be it a reproduction of other directorial visions accomplished previously or an original innovation by Vijitha Bandara, the design of Parama Sarah was spectacular! The feat was achieved well and showed dextrous stage movement and overall manoeuvring on the part of the invisible ‘mount’ covered by the long dress of the actress, as the actress who played the living dead acted out her part riding on the shoulders of another person.

In terms of symbolisms brought out through the physical designs related to characters it must be noted that the design of Parma Sarah’s spectacular height shows symbolically how the mind made character is unreal and incongruous with what is physically findable in their world.

And the largeness of the ghost of Param Sarah also shows how the factor of intimidation is doubled on account of a ghost who is insurmountably large and thereby a force that cannot be trifled with. On this line of discussion there was also a noteworthy aspect related to the physical context of the protagonist.Thevye is a poor peasant beleaguered by poverty and the burden of five daughters whom he must give away in marriage. He is a member of the labouring rural village economy. And beneath his convivial euphemistic visage is a man who is much oppressed in life.

This oppression that he is saddled with, and the weightiness of his station in life is symbolically shown through his carting around his own cart in lieu of the horse, which is said to be unfit for work due to a broken horseshoe. Through this approach the story unfolding on the boards shows us that Thevye in something of a ‘workhorse’ in the context of his societal and domestic spheres. The larger and more officially declared symbol is of course the fiddler perched on a roof whose precarious position is likened to that of the lives of the villagers whose uncertainty of life is symbolised through the fiddler whose means of expression is of course through the music he plays.

Do I have any critical points about the performance as a translation? In respect of the language I most certainly did notice an instance where the dialogue had what seemed an odd insertion of the more contemporarily stylised vernacular of Sinhala English code-mixing.

The dialogue, in depicting a story of a Russian origin translated to Sinhala maintained much of its Sinhala lingual integrity to the point where even the terms for currency was not translated to our context.

The mendicant of the village receives ‘Kopecks’ instead of rupees or cents, but at the point Thevye is met by a band of his fellow villagers one of them on spotting him refers to him as “man” and then Thevye when asked what has stalled him on the road says he had an “accident”. The use of the Sinhala words for these two English words ‘man’ and ‘accident’ would have been more than contemporarily acceptable and what motivated that sudden deviation from maintaining a completely Sinhala lingual texture was rather baffling to me. Was it in the translation of the late Nanda Vithana, or was it a directorial intervention by Bandara? Whichever the factor may be the insertions stood out as oddities to the lingual rhythm that the drama was threading scene by scene as the story progressed.

Theatre today, to survive the increasingly commercialisation conscious times we live in, is compelled to become what can sustain itself in the market of theatregoers. And a foreign work when going on the boards to our audiences, especially as a translation will no doubt need to be moulded in more than the aspect of language alone, to touch the pulses of the majority of Sri Lankan viewers in terms of what is deemed appreciable.

Unlike a film, when it comes to a work of theatre I feel every performance can be assessed as a separate ‘text’ with its merits and demerits that can vary from the factors of acting to lighting which are all done ‘live’ with no chance for ‘retakes’ to ‘better the performance’. Thus on this note I shall say what Vijitha Bandara put on the boards at the John de Silva auditorium on Valentine’s Day this year was a performance that was an absolute ‘steal’ at the price stated on the admission ticket.