When Ceylon’s winds of change hit the stage with Lanerolle humour
Collette's sketch of HCN
H.C.N. de Lanerolle was a thespian extraordinaire who had the temerity to move away from Shakespeare and Sheridan, bringing local colour and spice to our stage, ‘sending up’ everyone from stuffy sartorial Mudliyars in their Jaguar cars to the parsimonious Jaffna Tamils, happy-go-lucky Burghers, ‘nanas’ and even the white “semi-divines”.
Telling is the anecdote about how Lord Soulbury, in the mid-1940s watching de Lanerolle’s play Fifty-Fifty especially written for the occasion, said: “a people so endowed with a sense of humour deserve independence.” And H. D. Jansz, Editor of the Ceylon Observer, would write: “we have laughed our way to freedom!”
Sitting in a quiet, sun-flooded room at the Kelaniya University Library, Prof. Primal de Lanerolle, now a septuagenarian himself, has a lot to reminisce about, looking back on his father HCN’s eventful life – a man who, despite his humour, had firm ideals and stood by what he believed in.
This, Primal’s fifth visit to Lanka after emigrating to the United States with family in 1958, was occasioned by the extended de Lanerolle family (also including Primal’s cousin Mahinda and uncle Kenneth) donating a very valuable collection of books to the Kelaniya University Library. “An eclectic collection,” as Primal mused looking over it, ranging from G. M. Henry’s A Guide to the Birds of Ceylon to lofty tomes on ancient Persia and H. V. Morton travelogues.
Winding down memory lane to a flamboyant-shaded Colombo and an “alien” California “with only one other Sri Lankan (in that vast state)- one Rutnam brother,” Primal, currently Emeritus Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at University of Illinois at Chicago, harbours nostalgic Sri Lankan memories of curry Sundays and of course the abundant fruits from the garden, but also selling copies of his father’s plays like ‘Return of the Ralahamy; for Rupees 5 (aged 
near the Lionel Wendt –before leaving for the USA aged 12 (and HCN himself 59).
HCN, says Primal, grew up in Matara and had an idyllic childhood – “a lot of hunting, a lot of fishing, and a minimum of school work!”- and it was this setting that fostered the easy humour.
His first “great good fortune” in adult life was to be part of the YMCA, which sent him on a scholarship to Springfield College, Massachusetts for his basic degree and a Master’s in education (coming back to Sri Lanka “just before World War II”). But also it was the ‘Y’ that egged HCN to write plays, the first carnival in Ceylon organized by the ‘Y’ being when he got into theatre. In 1930 he came up with his first ‘Ralahamy’ play, a character that would scintillate and make Lanka chortle till 1957 (for it wasn’t only Colombo – HCN and the plays toured to Nuwara Eliya, Kandy and elsewhere, says Primal often with family- wife Sarah and sons Vasantha and Primal – in tow).
However somewhere in between he fell out with the YMCA because the ‘Y’ opposed him “criticizing the government so much in the plays” and HCN became a journalist, and later also the Circulation Manager and Editorial Manager at the Lake House and the Times of Ceylon.
Prof. Primal de Lanerolle. Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Moving to California was not at all fun or an adventure says Primal, and though HCN went there to provide his sons with an English education after the Swabasha policy (the ‘Sinhala Only’ bill), in that strange world so different from Ceylon he “lost all his humour” and could never again write something really funny or substantial. He was first part of the YMCA there, and later taught at junior high school till he retired.
Yet what Primal most fondly cherishes of his father is his acute foresight (what really made him a great playwright). HCN was greatly opposed to the Sinhala Only bill, stressing that Sri Lankans were less than 15 million and that “to do business with the greater world we need English”.
He also urged through his plays preserving the civil rights of the Tamil population – “because, he said, if we don’t we are going to have trouble” (this in the ‘40s).
He was also very concerned about women’s rights. “In his plays the women go to college, which in the ’40’s is very surprising…. (and) everybody’s supposed to be able to vote.”
“He was very forward thinking and radical in that way,” muses Primal, pointing out how he spoke about language being more divisive than religion in the ’40’s.
Just like in his play Fifty-Fifty, HCN believed that everyone should have equal representation – “that everybody should be equal”- and that everybody should be valued for who they are and not their race, ethnic background and family. After the Soulbury Commission fracas about whether fifty percent of the seats of the council should be allocated for the minorities, at the end of the play Fifty-Fifty, Ralahamy’s daughter marries the son of his accountant who is Tamil and HCN says “and they will have kids, and they will be fifty-fifty…”
Some names of yesteryear associated in the dramatic milieu with HCN were Lyn Ludowyk (with whom he did He Comes from Jaffna), E. C. B. Wijeysinghe (fellow actor and scribe who often played Mudliyar), P. C. Thambugalla (the very first Man from Jaffna), K.D.M. Ooyanwatte (the ‘original Ralahamy’) and E.M.W. Joseph (a literary prodigy whom HCN befriended straight out of Ananda College).
As we conclude our chat harking back to a golden age of Ceylon, Primal’s hopes for his motherland are curiously the same as his father’s 70 years ago. “The French are learning English now, and by God! if the French are learning English we all of us should too!” he stresses.
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