UPCOMING EVENT
THE CANADIAN RAJAH
- The Canadian Rajah
- DPAC, Empire Damansara
- 24-26 October 2024 & (27th Matinee)
- Purchase Ticket
The play is written by Dave Carley a Canadian theatre artist whose primary focus is stage plays. His works have had over 450 productions all over Canada and USA. He also writes for radio and television.
Synopsis
This is a bizarre but true story of betrayal, loss and disappointment of Esca Brooke the first- born son of the Second Rajah of Sarawak, Rajah Charles Brooke.
The mother of his firstborn son is Dayang Mastiah whom he married in a Muslim ceremony and which was registered in the state registry.
About three years later when Sarawak was almost bankrupt, Rajah Charles went to England in search of a wealthy woman to fill the coffers of his little kingdom. There he marries Marguerite (Ranee) de Windt and thus her dowry too.
Upon her arrival in Sarawak, the Ranee proceeds to produce heirs and spares but in the horizon is Esca the potential successor to the “throne”. To ensure that only the English and her children will take over from their father, Ranee Margaret has Esca removed to England where he lived with a bitter Anglican clergyman and his sickly wife, where they endured a life of poverty in a string of miserably poor parishes.
Sometime later, Willian Daykin, Esca’s adopted father was transferred to the backwoods of Canada to Madoc, near Ontario.
The congregation here were desperately poor and William Daykin hated his work , often making Esca take over his job as preacher.
Esca won a scholarship to Trinity College when Daykin, in filling up the forms lied about Esca’s age making him three years younger than he actually was. The education he had here propelled him into the upper echelons of Canadian society who were intrigued by this exotic creature who was neither English nor Asian.
Esca carried a certain melancholy and sadness in him which even his children could not fathom. He was a private man not given to excessive shows of emotions but he was fond of gardening and exotic plants.
As he aged he began to obsess about his identitiy .The need for recognition of his lineage consumed him so much that he wrote to politicians in England and even appealed to the King of England but no one ever replied to him. He had been effectively erased from their annals of history.
Esca died without ever resolving his Brooke lineage but in this play Dave Carley has given him a chance to meet the Ranee in her home in England – the main puppeteer and impediment to the recognition as a Brooke – to put his case for instating his true identity.
Esca died in 1953 at the age of 58.
– Dave Carley
