The latest production of Class Theatre, Bārti Dām Deba Nā (Sisir Mancha, January 20), presents Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay! in a fairly straightforward Bengali translation by Sukumar Das, whose script captures much of Fo’s surface scurrility, if not the variety of his billingsgate. Das also keeps Fo’s topical connection of the Italian food riots that inspired this 1974 work.
The problem lies in the pace and general tone. For Fo’s drama to have its desired impact of savage satire aimed at the corrupt tyranny of bourgeois capitalist administrations, simultaneously retaining his extremist ideology and New Left sympathies of the Seventies, Ramen Sarkar needed to adopt a ruthlessly hard-hitting and revolutionary directorial stance. His style lacks the radicalism one associates with this play.
Nor does the performance technique sufficiently compensate with external factors similar to Fo’s own mix of farce, mime, cabaret, theatricality and improvisation. Poor timing and late reactions often spoil the superficial fun. Only the women (Mamata Chattopadhyay and Rekha Sarkar) cultivate the wry, antisexist, street-smart approach characteristic of Fo. Nirmal Guha Ray’s skeletal wooden set appeals to the eye, but Samir Chatterjee’s choice of western classical music would have made Fo cry in despair.
(From The Telegraph, 5 February 1993)