Saheli Mitra
Games people play
Page 4 is a Ram Gopal Varma spoof complete with sleaze, espionage, music, dance and gunfire. It depicts an underworld where cultural dons Giridharilal Gurguria (played by Phalguni Chattopadhyay) and Mohandas Dibakar Heptullah (played by Goutam Mukherjee) try to gain control over seminars, awards, cultural dos et al. Lok Krishti members Prasun Bhattacharya, Rumki Chattopadhyay, Monalisa, Partha Chattopadhyay and others put in a fine performance. The dialogue was replete with witty associations. Perfect light and music along with songs by Rupankar made for an entertaining evening. That is, if one was able to ignore the frustration of the artist and ruthlessness of the all-encompassing game that the play projects. Even the central character Monohar Middha (Bratya Basu) has no redeeming feature. He is a natural consequence of the hostile times.
Sebanti Sarkar
Cue from the past
An exhibition of paintings by five young painters, presented by Metropolitan Art Salon, had much that was promising and a few cliches that could have been done without. While Ganesh Dey’s oil paintings display the artist’s skill in handling metaphors, Dipak Ghosh uses mixed media to paint his subjects. In Pratiksha, a wife waits for her husband and interestingly, Pradip Majumdar’s women too wait for their lovers. Ranjit Adhikary’s coloured ink works on paper blend nature and woman, and Joydeb Bala’s works in acrylic seem to be frames of joy. However, their compositions are reflective of a vocabulary prevalent in the 1950’s and 60’s. A more contemporary visual idiom is desirable.
Sandip Sarkar
