Gently slipping into its silver edition, Nandikar’s National Theatre Festival must receive a standing ovation for persevering annually over 25 years, providing Calcuttans the only sustained platform to see a wide spectrum of Indian theatre. Even if some invitees have proved substandard recently, even if the full houses caused by serpentine overnight queues in the past have vanished thanks to TV, the organizational achievement remains undiminished.

Almost without fail, at least one surprise every year has won us over. This time, Natya Chetana (from outside Bhubaneswar) did the trick with dramatist-director Subodh Pattanaik’s Mati in Oriya, though we might have expected it on the strength of their Katha in 2002. Among those few Indian troupes to live and work on a rural commune, Natya Chetana admirably pursues theatre for social development. Mati (both earth and mother) manages to connect all of India’s present woes, perhaps too causally, but nonetheless passionately. An American in top hat and stars-and-stripes (an unnecessarily simplistic demonization, the only flaw) sells hybrid seeds to farmers through politicians and middlemen; eventually yields suffer and the villagers are exploited, paving the way for Maoist intervention and violence. The grounds for the spread of insurrection are sympathetically delineated. The collective performs energetically (especially the main family, in the picture) and Pattanaik designs another trademark bamboo-and-cloth set, made exclusively of natural material.

A similar unit, Rupantar from Khulna, operates several travelling teams delivering folk-based art across Bangladesh. Adarsha Netar Pat revives patachitra singing to awaken political consciousness. A romantic musical playlet on Chandidas followed. Finally, in Khatash Raja, scenarist Rafiqul Islam Khokan and director Swapan Guha presented a land where corruption reigns supreme in every sphere of rural life. However, because it is Bangladesh, the criticism cannot risk becoming explicit, so they maintain a fairy-tale sheen. The singing and dancing are lively; Mosharaf Ali Sohel specializes in animal portraiture, his impersonation of a cow with character being particularly delightful.

Natrang (Jammu) returned with Saiyan Bhaye Kotwal, the Hindi translation of Vasant Sabnis’s Marathi original. Like Rupantar, satirical but folksy and entertaining, it lacks the acid edge of Vijay Tendulkar’s classic Ghashiram Kotwal, since Sabnis wrote for the commercial mainstream stage. When the king makes his brother-in-law the Kotwal, his superseded Havildar vows to create trouble. Balwant Thakur directs Natrang professionally, as always, and the rustic Kotwal who understands cattle better than the court is depicted impressively, but this remains one of Thakur’s lighter efforts.

From bad governance to social reality, yet staying within the fold of folk tradition, author-director Urmil Thapliwal’s Harishchannar ki Ladai by Darpan (Lucknow) contemporizes Raja Harishchandra’s legend by contrasting it with the sad circumstances of a Nautanki actor who plays him. He wins fame in the truth-speaking lead role, but in real life gets pilloried for doing the same. His son, unlike Harishchandra’s, dies from poor health care. Conceptually interesting, the drama drags by describing the endings of both stories in long-drawn detail, declining into off-key singing. This is a pity, because Darpan accepts the challenge in Nautanki of singing the entire text and succeeds for the most part, up to this point.

Before his premature death this year, Chetan Datar directed for Awishkar (Mumbai) Kahani Sumitra ki, a Hindi translation of Mitrachi Goshta by Tendulkar, who also died in 2008. Awishkar’s visit therefore turned into a double commemoration, but the three-hour marathon amply demonstrated that Datar should have edited it considerably. He chose to eschew all furniture and props, and used simple white and black costume, but this minimalism forced attention on the cast, where Aditi Deshpande (the victimized lesbian protagonist) did not fully convince. Prashant Chaudappa gave a much more felt portrayal as her confidant.

The festival flop was Kafka Ek Adhyay in Hindi by the National School of Drama Repertory Company, Delhi. Asif Ali Haider’s script, set on the day Kafka died in a TB sanatorium, is far too short to do justice to his complex personal life, which flits by in a series of flimsy flashbacks. The director, Suresh Sharma, lengthened it in vain with pointless video clips of Mrs Kafka waiting outside and a lamentable masked dance to tedious music. The acting is uninspired, and someone should teach Kafka’s mother how to set her dinner table.