This is the first of a four-part essay from the writer’s remarks at a speech delivered at the Kolamba Kamatha Festival on 28 March 

The date 8 May 1956 is considered as a watershed moment in the history of British theatre. On that day a play was staged which would change the shape and face of British drama. Two years earlier a stage director, George Devine, had cofounded an organisation for staging plays by young, radical writers. It called itself the English Stage Company (ESC). On 2 April 1956, the ESC purchased the Royal Court Theatre in London.

For its first season the company’s founders planned a cycle of five plays. The first of these was a fairly tame drama by Angus Wilson, ‘The Mulberry Bush’. The second was a production of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’. Both these had been directed several times before. In the case of ‘The Crucible,’ by 1956 it had already become a classic of contemporary theatre. It was the third play that would break ground, for the ESC, the Royal Court Theatre, and British drama in general. This was John Osborne’s ‘Look Back in Anger’.

A searing look into the class system and the institution of marriage in post-war Britain, ‘Look Back in Anger’ delved into ideas and themes which few British playwrights had probed with such frankness. Almost immediately it created an uproar. Many newspapers railed against it and gave it negative or lukewarm reviews. It was described as “intense, angry, feverish, and undisciplined” in one paper and “unspeakably dirty and squalid” in another. Even critics who seemed sympathetic to the story sounded caution on its themes.

The only exception was Kenneth Tynan. A highly respected critic, as outspoken as the writers and dramatists he championed, Tynan became quite receptive to Osborne’s play. Writing in The Observer, one of the oldest newspapers in the UK, he commented that it symbolised a growing rift between an older, conservative generation and a younger, more outspoken one in the context of postwar Britain. Questioning its critics, he praised Osborne for being true to life and in doing so producing a “minor miracle”.

Tynan ended his review with these words: “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see ‘Look Back in Anger’. It is the best young play of its decade.”

‘Maname’

The review was published five days after the play, on 13 May 1956. Six months later, on 3 November 1956 at the University of Ceylon in Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, the university Sinhalese Drama Circle staged ‘Maname’. 

Written and directed by Ediriweera Sarachchandra, based on a Buddhist Jataka tale and anchored in a fusion of various theatrical styles, ‘Maname’ became as representative of a new theatre in Sri Lanka as ‘Look Back in Anger’ had been of a new theatre in Britain. After it made its way to other parts of the country, including Colombo, the press began reviewing it with as much curiosity as with Osborne’s play. Unlike the latter, however, the press gave ‘Maname’ positive notices.

One of the more perceptive reviews was written by the critic and journalist Regi Siriwardena. Published in the Ceylon Daily News a few days after it was staged, Siriwardena noted that ‘Maname’ represented a breakthrough in theatrical form. 

He argued that it was quite unlike what the Sinhalese Drama Circle or the flagship dramatic society at the University of Ceylon, DramSoc, had staged in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time the Sinhalese Drama Circle had presented local adaptations of European dramatists, from Molière to Gogol to Chekhov. ‘Maname’ did away with these trends and promoted a new theatre among Sinhala-speaking and bilingual audiences. This would be known as stylised drama.

Reflecting on these developments 25 years later, Siriwardena speculated about the social composition of those who watched Sarachchandra’s play.

“… from my impressions of the spectators who came to performances of ‘Maname’ in its early years at the Borella Young Men’s Buddhist Association and Lumbini, I would hazard the guess that the new audience of 1956 and immediately succeeding years was composed predominantly of urban lower middle-class Sinhala-speaking people.”

He argued that this underlay a much bigger achievement. “What ‘Maname’ effected then was to give the bilingual artists working in the theatre – Professor Sarachchandra and those who came in his wake: Gunasena Galappatti, Dayananda Gunawardena, and Henry Jayasena – an opening to the Sinhala-speaking lower middle class. Apart from the intrinsic dramatic achievement of ‘Maname’… [i]t was in consonance with the climate of Sinhala cultural revivalism in and after 1956.”

Siriwardena added that for most Sinhala-speaking audiences ‘Maname’ contrasted strongly with the “hybrid” nurthi theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Influenced if not inflected by Parsi and European theatre, by the 1950s nurthi was perceived as standing outside the canon of indigenous or national art in Sri Lanka. Although ‘Maname’ was inflected by multiple cultural and artistic forms, including kabuki, for Sinhala-speaking audiences it seemed to represent a more rooted and authentic experience.

Different receptions 

In the context of the performing arts, terms like ‘rooted,’ ‘authentic,’ ‘native,’ ‘national,’ and ‘indigenous’ are, of course, very politically charged. It would be dangerous to deploy these terms and claim that one conception of drama is superior to the rest. Yet what is interesting is how differently cultural sentiments shaped the reception to ‘Look Back in Anger’ in Britain and ‘Maname’ in Sri Lanka.

In their respective countries, these plays ushered in a new idiom and broke down artistic barriers. But while ‘Look Back in Anger’ was celebrated by a young generation for its unconventional themes and attitudes, ‘Maname’ was praised by another generation for conforming to notions of indigeneity and authenticity.

This difference should tell us something about the social conditions that in Sri Lanka laid the foundations of plays such as ‘Maname,’ and generated a wave of rebellion, resurgence, and revival which fostered a very outspoken set of playwrights. These younger artists were not just receptive to what was happening in other societies. They were also part and parcel of the most significant generational shift in their own country in post-independence Sri Lanka – arguably one of the most important in any former colonial society.

In postwar Britain, the generation of playwrights who banded around Osborne and ‘Look Back in Anger’ called themselves the Angry Young Men. Post-independence Sri Lanka’s Angry Young Men banded together in opposition to stylised theatre, while at the same time seeking encouragement and inspiration from their predecessors. These playwrights had their leaders and figureheads. Among them was Sugathapala de Silva.

De Silva’s generational context

Before we talk about Sugathapala de Silva, however, it is important that we understand the extent to which postwar generational shifts and the changing undercurrents of the Sinhala theatre influenced him. As importantly, we need to understand the way in which this generation of artistes came together, and the ways in which they differed from each other. The rest of the presentation will focus on these two themes.

If the starting point to all this is 1956, my initial observation is that the cultural revival unleashed that year was contradicted by the same social and political forces that contributed to that revival. This contradiction is best seen when contrasting the initial reception to Sarachchandra’s drama with the criticisms it attracted in later years. While no one should doubt the achievements of ‘Maname’ and ‘Sinhabahu,’ those who followed Sarachchandra in the Sinhala theatre had very different conceptions of that theatre.

This contradiction becomes more interesting when we realise that in countries like Britain, the trajectory of the theatre was more clearcut and predictable.

In Britain, the Second World War had destroyed much of its cultural infrastructure, including theatres and film halls. Yet within 10 years, a new theatre had been born and a new generation of writers had taken root. The rupture was gradual, but when it came, it opened an entire avenue of possibilities for British theatre, cinema, and literature.

This was seen not so much in the opening of new theatres, schools, and workshops as an influx of new talent to old institutions, such as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Such developments were made possible, in part, by scholarships these institutions began offering as well as a spurt in enthusiasm for the theatre among non-elite groups. This is what helped actors like Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton get established. In an interview, O’Toole recalled how he entered the RADA just when it was opening its doors.

“A chum of mine… and I hitchhiked our way into London to begin our lives and we jumped off the lorry, the truck, at a station called Houston and we were aiming for a men’s hostel. …And we were plodding down and I looked on my left and it said, ‘The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’ and my chum said: ‘Well, if you’re going to be an actor, this is the kind of shop where they deal with such matters, so why don’t you pop in?’… One thing led to another and I found myself, that afternoon even, turning up for the first interview, and then I did an audition and [another] audition, and found, to my surprise, that I was in.”

Evocative as it is, the passage underscores the point that the rupture which shook the British theatre loose was gradual and yet unfolded in one go. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, we can discern not one but two ruptures vis-à-vis the Sinhala theatre: political revolt and cultural revival in 1956, followed by a rejection of theatrical and artistic forms which 1956 had valorised and popularised.

Let me deconstruct this further. Whereas in Britain the revival of theatre and the emergence of a radical class of dramatists was simultaneous, in Sri Lanka these developments unfolded sequentially. I suggest that this was not just necessary, but also unavoidable.

(The writer is an independent researcher, author, columnist, and analyst whose work spans international relations, history, anthropology, and politics. He holds an LLB from the University of London and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Relations from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies [BCIS]. In 2024, he was a participant in the International Visitor Leadership Program [IVLP] conducted by the US State Department. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific-focused foreign policy think tank. In 2025, he did two lecture stints in India, one as a Resident Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad and another on art and culture at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Since 2023, he has authored books on Sri Lankan institutions and public figures while pursuing research projects spanning art, culture, history, and geopolitics. He can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com)

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)