Natya Samhati’s celebration of the sesquicentennial of Bengali professional theatre moved into the second quarter of the 20th century with two romantic-comedy hits from the 1920s and 1930s. They memorialized two of the biggest names in the business: Amritalal Basu in his advanced years with Byāpikā Bidāy (1926, staged at Minerva) and Aparesh Mukhopadhyay from the next generation with Mānmayi Girls School (1932, at the second Star Theatre). They also served to contrast their playwrights’ styles, exemplifying how the new drama left the old template behind. Quite funnily, the current directors share the same surnames as the original icons!
Basu had a relatively conservative attitude to social reform that he partially withdrew in Byāpikā Bidāy, which shows a widow willing to marry her old flame and a bhadralok falling in love with a maid. On the other hand, the eponymous part of Mrs Pakrashi is socially incorrect today because he caricatures her as a dominating mother-in-law with an imposingly heavy figure: his implication that all such byāpikā ladies are necessarily viragos must be summarily rejected. Surprisingly, director Asit Basu echoes the author by writing in his note, “persons … whose circumference is vast … [are] remarkably different from others. They like to dominate.”
Despite these drawbacks, Modhurima Goswami treats Mrs Pakrashi acceptably in Durgadas Smrity Sangha’s production, including her malapropisms in English and Hindi. The three young women (Chaitali Ghosh as her daughter, Piyali Samanta as the widow, Sanjita as the singing maid Chamatkar) present distinctive portraits. Jayanta Mitra excels in an unusual role for him as Chamatkar’s suitor to whom Amritalal gave the classic mispronunciation of democracy as “demonocracy”, though Amritalal also imparted him with a stammer as a cheap joke, and we wonder how such a man could have become a revolutionary. As the music connoisseur, however, Pabitra Chattopadhyay sings offkey repeatedly.
By the time Mānmayi Girls School came along, Aparesh Mukhopadhyay and Sisir Bhaduri had transformed the whole approach of the commercial stage, clearly discernible in this play, Rabindranath Maitra’s only full-length one. Too bad for Bengali theatre that he died at the age of 37 within months of writing it. A more serious intent, realistic settings and refined flavour feature here, a worthy successor to Tagore’s Shesh Rakshā. Comical rather than farcical like Byāpikā Bidāy, with an accidental couple pretending to be married to fit the eligibility criterion for husband-and-wife teaching jobs at a village girls’ school, it actually points to the lack of employment opportunities for graduates in Calcutta as well as the idealistic vision of a rural zamindar to provide female education. The humorous complications begin when the lead pair must share the same lodgings like any married couple.
Rangroop’s director Sima Mukhopadhyay accords the text the sensitivity it requires, especially the fine unexpressed affection that turns into love for the teachers (Anwesa Bandyopadhyay and Dron Mukherjee in commendably understated acting: photo). Their likeable zamindar benefactors (Susmita Pan and Apurba Kumar Saha) perform as foils, Saha’s the more rounded characterization between them. Ananyo Sankar Debabhuti depicts the school secretary in somewhat slapstick fashion. All in all, though, a thoroughly enjoyable revival.
28 October 2023