Adapting a play that is ingrained in the European ecosystem is often problematic. This rings true especially for the works of Evald Flisar. The Slovene playwright has been staged several times over the last decade or so. Flisar, with his complex plots and constant focus on deranged characters, is anything but ready for adaptation to our proscenium theatre practice. But Amitava Dutta has this rare camaraderie with Flisar’s works. Ganakrishti’s latest, Athaba Rabi Thakur, is the proof of the pudding.
A take-off from Flisar’s What About Leonardo?, the play has little to do with Leonardo da Vinci or Rabindranath Tagore for that matter. On the contrary, it is a slow exposition of life inside a mental asylum where the inmates move along with various degrees of neurological disorders as the doctors and the nurses deal with them. Athaba Rabi Thakur focuses on a particular patient (played with characteristic verve by Debsankar Halder) who struggles with amnesia but develops an extraordinary mnemonic gift in the process. Treated by an empathetic doctor (Amiya Halder) and his team, which includes a junior (Soma Dutta) who sheds her apron to fulfil the patient’s need for love — as an experiment — the play keeps us engaged, mostly, as characters like the wife (Suranjana Dasgupta) and the frivolous mediapersons come and go.
Amitava Dutta, who also directs the production, makes effective use of poetry and music to make a statement about the careful rehabilitation of people whose lives are out of joint. The inmates play their parts well, and Amiya Halder, who revisits his doctor’s role from the final revival of Bohurupee’s Mister Kakatua, makes a welcome return to the stage.
Although this reviewer has serious reservations about the relevance of ‘absurd’ plays in our times, Anya Theatre’s Caretaker (picture, right) makes him reconsider things other than the absurdity of the human situation. Adapted by Arindam Mukherjee from Harold Pinter’s 1960 play, The Caretaker, this one is a classic instance of an actor-driven production. Mukherjee, who also directs it with precision, does not meddle with Pinter’s original but deftly transplants it inside a ramshackle, suburban residence where things keep falling apart.
Caretaker by Anya Theatre Anshuman Bhowmick
Debesh Roychowdhury, arguably the most skilful actor currently on the Bengali stage, makes optimum use of moments of silence to etch the few days in the life of a pavement dweller who unexpectedly finds solace in the comfort of a regular house till he gets confused about his obeisance to its irregular dwellers — played in complementary fashion by Anirban Chakrabarti and Tathagata Chowdhury. Chakrabarti keeps his composure but lets his guard down towards the end. Chowdhury balances a flamboyant persona and a restless soul. Roychowdhury’s mastery over psychological acting finds a suitable canvas that Mukherjee lays out for him that the light designer, Dhanapati Mondal, illuminates. Thus, silent interactions with a leaky roof, a laughing Buddha statue that irks, the shoes that never fit, all make a drama out of nothing, keeping the audience riveted for a good 150 minutes. Barring a few things, like the casual blabbering by the presenter, Caretaker takes the trophy as the best Bengali adaptation of any absurd play in many years.