Pancham Vaidic?s Rajnaitik Hatya, (Uttam Mancha, March 20) was based on the original Jean-Paul Sartre play Les Mains Sales, which, set in World War II Europe, brought out the idealistic individual?s turbulent inner conflict, as he attempted to choose the right, most ethical, political path from the options around him.

Director Saonli Mitra?s biggest challenge lay in convincingly raising the same questions about the individual?s role in determining rights and wrongs, raised by Sartre, and making these questions seem as relevant and not-easily-answerable today as they were when they were raised over 60 years ago. She does this without too much difficulty.

The plot smacks of the current political scenario in the country, where the debate about entering into coalition politics for the sake of greater good is an ongoing reality. Hugo, the upper class intellectual youth, is torn on the one hand by his commitment to ?purist? socialist party politics and on the other, by his growing understanding of the policies of Hoederer, the Proletariat Party leader, whom Hugo has been hired to assassinate because of his decision to ?compromise? ideology for the sake of coalition power.

Mitra has been able to bring out the theme of this terrible personal dilemma, thanks mainly to excellent casting ? though, disappointingly, she hasn?t taken part. Indrajit Chakraborty plays the protagonist Hugo ? deeply empathetic to the poor, but shunned by them for belonging to the bourgeois class ? persuasively. Arpita Ghosh (Jessica, Hugo?s wife) has done a good job of translating Satre?s play.

Ekti Samajchitra (Tapan Theatre, March 22), touted as a ?collage of poems and plays? and funded by the Union government?s department of culture, turned out to be an assortment of works of some of Bengal?s greatest literary figures. The renditions, however, were inconsistently good.

The play reading of one of Dwijendalal Roys?s plays, Chandragupta, was among the most well-executed, with the orators? voices conjuring up grand images of the period of the great emperor. Manasi Sinha?s monologue from Rabindranath Tagore?s Streer Potro, too, touched a chord. But many of the performances suffered from uneven voice modulation ? surprising for a programme having recitation as its main component.