The latest productions by two talented, comparatively younger Bengali groups—Sudrak’s Chandālini and Chenamukh’s Drishtikanyā—prove conclusively how dependent on other people’s ideas our theatre has become. The experience is all the more distressing because these two groups are led by the shining lights of the new generation of Bengali dramatist-directors, Debasis Majumdar and Indrasish Laharry respectively. Both have written ostensibly original plays which on closer examination show very little evidence of creativity.
Majumdar’s attempt is comparatively more noteworthy, since it openly reworks Tagore’s Chandālikā. Reinterpreting classics is most welcome, of course, specially of idols like Tagore elevated to an untouchable pedestal through bardolatry—but only if the re-creator has something new to say or a new angle to offer, as in Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Ionesco’s Macbett. However, Majumdar derives virtually everything from elsewhere: the concept from Sisir Das’s Shyāmā revisited, including the insertion of a political dimension, stylization from Dancers Guild’s Tomāri Mātir Kanyā, echoes of plots from other Tagore plays such as Muktadhārā and Rakta-karabi, plus the inevitable Rabindrasangit.
All could be forgiven if Majumdar added an original view, but there is nothing substantially different in this version which Tagore has not stated or suggested better. Ananda’s firmness here is just a superficial invention. Almost as if hesitant to deviate from Gurudev, Majumdar does not even resolve his political, religious and ecological interpolations at the end. The result is a theatrical hodgepodge that goes nowhere. Good acting might have salvaged something, but Bitan Ghosh (Prakriti) is not cut out for a main role, despite a full-throated singing voice. Indrani Maitra makes a strong Mother, but seems undecided between expressionism and naturalism. Chandan Sengupta (the Slave) is a saving grace.
Chenamukh’s Drishtikanyā is “inspired by Daphne Du Maurier’s short story, The Blue Lenses”. This critic does not wish to re-review Du Maurier’s famous and much-dramatized story in these columns, regardless of Laharry’s variations, so on to the production itself. Anashua Majumdar (as the woman who gains “sixth sight”), Samiran Mukhopadhyay (her husband) and Meghna Laharry (the nurse) keep up Chenamukh’s high standards of performance, handling the comic scenes and snappy dialogue colloquially mixed with English relatively well, but ever so often the tone of entertainment veers toward commercial levels, marring the message about our bestial inner selves.
(From The Telegraph, 25 June 1993, revised after a corrigendum about Drishtikanyā printed on 16 July 1993)