Blues (Oxford Book Store, September 12), a stage adaptation of Katherine Mansfield’s The Fly, turned out to be more of an exercise in individual interpretation than an exploration of the huge dramatic potential of a great short story.

But then, debutante director Amrita Panja sets out to do nothing but that ? offer a personal interpretation. Interestingly, she zeroes in on one specific section of the narrative ? referred to as the ‘fly episode’ in the short story, where the character called ‘Boss’ first rescues a fly that has accidentally fallen into an ink pot and then kills it with drops of ink from the same pot. The device helped highlight and dramatise one of the most significant themes of the story ? inevitability.

While the set (a desk dotted with study paraphernalia), sound (the drone of a fly) and light (dim and foreshadowing doom) as well as Nirmalaya Majumdar’s (in picture) competent mono-act makes the production stage-worthy, the play nevertheless stops short of being a good production. Where is the sense of total annihilation of self that permeates Mansfield’s masterpiece?

In spite of deviating from the plot of the original story and killing the protagonist at the end of the play ? here the character commits suicide ? Panja could not achieve that eerie feeling.