Anil's Ghost Play Analysis

Ondaatje’s artwork has and always will be one of my favourite things to read and analyse. Therefore last night, I decided to go watch the ongoing theatre adaptation of his new book, Anil’s Ghost. For those who still haven’t read it, this authentic and touching novel follows the thoughts of many Sri Lankan Tamils with different background during the dreadful civil war. It especially follows the eponymous character Anil, a slightly morose and independent forensic pathologist.
Just like the theatrical presentation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Tzu’s The Art of War or Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the theme of war is often present in plays.
Plus, I think people prefer or at least are keener to watch dramatic plays involving war since we can easily relate to the suffering of others, as if it was our own.
So, in the cramped but charming little theatre of Montmartre, this theme as well as its impact on people was explored yesterday. The title of the play was Lost and found: Anil’s story. This modification was surely planed out by the critically acclaimed director Nishi De Silva. Both titles are quite similar and serve the same purpose: the protagonist linking her past life in Sri Lanka with her current one. Plus, we know that De Silva is of mostly Tamil ancestry and so one can understand why she chose to …show more content…
Since music, lightning and images played a huge role in this play, not many words needed to be spoken. The director chose to integrate the most important parts of the story into her play, which she judged were the passages in italics in the book. Those passages are, the novel, bits of information about Sri Lanka (geography, fauna and flora for example) as well as information about the civil war (list of missing people, how people died, etc.). I can see now that De Silva really focused on bringing the war part of the story onto the spotlight of her play. She wanted to sensitize her audience to this real