Stage review:

No holds barred

Dulen Dissanayake

A scene from Adaraneeya Sanvadayak

Sunil Chandrasiri has once again hit the Sri Lankan audience with his play 'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak' (A Loving Dialogue)-an adaptation of Uruguayan Mario Benedetti's play 'Pedro and the Captain'. 'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak' made much controversy at the 2012 State Drama Festival and ended up bagging six awards including best director, actor and script.

The play, in brief, is about an interrogator known as the Captain, and Pedro, a captive detained for interrogation. Their growing awareness of each other's plight is the main focus of the play.

'Adaraneeya Sanvadayak' opens with Pedro (Saranga Dissasekera) thrown into an interrogation room, somewhat tortured and face covered in a sack. Captain (Janaka Kumbukage) enters soon after and warns Pedro of the consequences that await him unless he talks. Despite continuous verbal and physical abuse, Pedro doesn't speak a word and is taken to the torture chamber to be tortured to talk.

Special effects

Returning from torture, the sack is removed from Pedro's face by Captain. Pedro begins to talk but refuses vehemently to betray his fellow rebels. Captain attempts to make him talk by enticing, terrorizing and tantalizing means but to no avail. Captain, acknowledgingly, says both interrogators and rebels share a mutual admiration towards the other. Pedro is soon tortured again offstage. The special effects suggest it is electrocuting this time.

Upon disoriented Pedro's return from torture chamber this time follows an intriguing interplay of psychological cat and mouse game between him and Captain to get under each other's skin as well as attempts to express their deep personal emotions and experiences at the same time to connect with each other. Captain confesses how he vomited the first time he had witnessed torture but was soon enthralled by it that he even had to visualise the torturing of a girl to copulate with his wife. Being incensed by Pedro's questions such as "How can I trust someone as dehumanized as you?" and observations that hauntingly disturb him, however, Captain sends Pedro once again for more torture although he realises a deep humanistic feeling for Pedro is growing in his mind. This time, though, because he was running out of sorts to have him speaking of the rebels who he wants to find out about.

Emotional death

A dying Pedro returns from torture chamber this time. Captain, too, returns very much under the influence of alcohol, presumably unable to torment his own conscience while abusing Pedro. Realising that Pedro is now dying and his own predicament is imminent, Captain begs him to give a single name of a rebel so he can save himself as he himself is another victim of the situation. Pedro refuses again and dies a little later, and Captain collapses at his feet and asks him to apologise. It is understandable that Captain dies an emotional death.

'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak' is a critique of circumstances which desensitize humans to direct their hostilities at a 'perceived enemy' defined by the "higher authorities." The backfiring consequences of violence that lead the aggressor to self-destruction are also effectively dramatised in the play. On a deeper level, quite paradoxically to what its title suggests, 'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak' is a study of violence and how it is injected to the individuals. The complex process of Pedro and Captain's bonding in such extremely suffocative circumstances suggests the unity even the opponents could attain in adversary. More importantly, the play makes a timely call for the revision of modern anti-rebellion and interrogation techniques that not only takes lives but devastates other involved people as well.

'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak, however, is not flawless: the director seems to be obsessed with shocking the audience by portraying violence, sadism and explicit sexual speech repeatedly rather than using them situationally. The ending of the play, too, looks considerably abrupt so the poignancy of the scene is affected. It would have been ideal had Captain ever asked "why's" from Pedro even though this might not be honest to the original script. 'Adaraneeya Sanwadayak' is not an easy play to identify with. It raises a lot of complex questions and hardly answers any of them. It cannot, however, be ignored at all because of its timeliness unless one is an escapist.

Pictures by Lalith C Gamage