Synopsis
A man in his late sixties looking pale and older than his age is listening to the radio while dressing to go and purchase his medication just as he has been doing for years. Suddenly the music is interrupted by a government announcement that a curfew has been enforced to settle the unrest across the country.
The curfew plus the delay in finding the money increases his stress level as he contemplates the prospect of not being able to purchase his life sustaining medication even for a day. In a panic he phones his doctor for advice only to learn that in these circumstances he has no solution for his dilemma.The feeling of being trapped in his own room fills him with despair while his behaviour becomes increasingly irrational. His declining condition and incessant coughing makes him feel fatigued as he walks unsteadily around the room before starring at the ceiling overcome by imaginings as to how he might die.
Stumbling on some old diaries he had written years ago, and used to read when feeling lonely, he recalls the times in his youth when his own mother, father and the sister were happy to celebrate a birthday. A clash breaks out between the man and other characters introducing a sequence of dramatic and funny overlapping scenes emerging from his readings and images from the past. For example, his mother’s attempt to kill herself by drinking poison in despair after the death of her alcohol adicted husband.The next scene opens with the young man sobbing from missing his mother and as he randomly reads from another diary the account of his mother running away with a new lover. With each new diary the scene changes unpredictably and the man becomes emotionally upset and starts yelling in anger, screaming and blaming others for his past and the destructive influences in his life. The past appears confused. Things like birthdays, weddings, making love with loose women, getting divorced, and the repeated mistakes make life become meaningless. What has he learnt from long years spent studying and reading books to graduate with a degree? Contrastingly, what lessons have been learned from a life with the many women whose company he then craved?
It seems that his whole life with its fun and absurdities is being acted out before us like a serious film edited by a kid who has no idea of the underlying meaning of the story. The man collapses exhausted by the long sequence of flashbacks. Feeling helpless in the situation the man drifts into fantasizing about starting life again and muttering to himself; “The one and only important thing that happens after birth is death. If I were not to die today, I now know what I would do if I were starting life again.
His physical condition is deteriorating rapidly: his coughing has turned to vomiting and his strength to stand has ebbed away. He now resembles a broken creature filled with fear and anger and, despairing of life, he is obsessed with images of dying a painful and lonely death.
His strong anticipation of death causes him to drop the phone on the floor when it rings unexpectedly. Fearful and imagining that everything in the room is awaiting his death he hides under the bed. Then manages to scrawl in his diary: “death might come as anything, a ringing phone, even silent ants or … I am writing about death so that perhaps one person reading this may gain at least one lesson from my bloody life.”
Trembling he drags himself to the table with a diary in one hand and a pen in the other to record how much of a stupid bugger he is to write such rubbish. Suddenly we hear the sound of a machinegun firing outside his room and the man drops to the ground dead accidently killed by a bullet coming through the window.
A restless soldier with a gun breaks down the door and enters the room only to find the man on the diaries scattered on the floor dead. Leaving the room in a careless manner he says to himself, “oh shit, just as well this bugger got in the way of the bullet, waste of a bullet anyway” and runs away.
Cast
Amarawansa: Prasad Sooriyarachchi
Young Amarawansa: Nalin Pradeep Udawela ,Sanath Wimalasiri
Father: Shasthri Mallawaarachchi, Ishantha Lanka Kankanamge
Mother: Ganga Jeevani Waliwattha, Malee Jayaweerage
Sister: Priyanka Sooriyabandara ,Jayani Senanayake
Soldier: Pradeep Chandrasiri
Uncle Martin: Premakumara Dasenayake
Music: Ranjith Priyantha Silava
Make Up: Jagath Padmasiri
Set: Pradeep Chandrasiri & Koralegedhara Pushpakumara
First performance was on 22nd of November, 1992 - Lumbini Theatre, Sri Lanka
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