A painting of David Garrick as Hamlet

Hamlet’s question: ‘To be or not to be’ is relevant even today. Many intellectuals are racked by the dilemma whether they should take up arms against the violence and corruption of the present or remain silent witnesses to it,” said director Bibhas Chakraborty.

Produced by Anya Theatre, Chakraborty’s rendition of Hamlet will open at the Academy of Fine Arts on March 29 and at Madhusudan Mancha on March 30.

“I have been trying to do Hamlet for a long time. It is one of my favourite plays,” Chakraborty said during rehearsals at the Anya Theatre Bhavan in Salt Lake. The play is translated by Shakti Biswas.

“The text remains intact. Politics is never in-your-face in my plays,” explained the director.

The costume combines the contemporary and Elizabethan. The setting, instead of being the castle of Elsinore, is the reopening of a pub off Park Street. The narrator explains that the pub was shut down following a shootout many years ago when a suspected “extremist” had been killed by cops. Hamlet thus begins from Act I scene II with Surojit Bandyopadhyay as Hamlet. How faithful it is to Shakespeare remains to be seen.

Himalayan light

A painting by Bireswar Sen

The artist Bireswar Sen had the privilege of being close to the likes of Rabindranath, Abanindranath, and Gaganendranath as well. His twin passions were English literature and painting. Nicholas Roerich had inspired Sen, as did the romance of the past, particularly the glory that was India, that he tried to relive in his work. But instead of trying to imitate the art of ancient India, he was alive to progressive western techniques, although in spirit his works were quite Indian. Sen was born in 1897, and his family is holding an exhibition of Bireswar Sen’s work — Pilgrim of Eternity — at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture that continues till April 23. In these miniature paintings depicting the Himalayan ranges, atmospherics is what matters most.

These “washes” glow with a mysterious light, and his primary interest seems to be capturing the essence of the landscapes instead of the details. Sen introduces tiny figures, not larger than specks, in his paintings. Apart from intriguing viewers, they enhance the majestic scale of the lofty mountains even in those tiny rectangles of paper.