Bengali theatre has had limited engagement with Harold Pinter primarily because of his thematic sophistication and unconventional writing, which they believe their viewers cannot comprehend. On the few occasions they have attempted his plays, they usually ended up simplifying or, worse, misinterpreting. One needs a foot planted securely in both cultures, like director Arindam Mukherjee, to negotiate Pinter (or, for that matter, Beckett) successfully, which distinguishes Anya Theatre’s Caretaker, adapted into a Bengal setting from The Caretaker (1960).
The trick is not to meddle with Pinter’s elliptical dialogue but to translate it faithfully—with concessions made to Bengali idiom, of course. Mukherjee does that studiously, finding equivalents for even the racist slurs, though he shies away from Pinter’s pauses and silences that express just as much as the language. He apologizes that to retain them would have lengthened the duration to three hours; but that is precisely the gauntlet that Pinter throws down, which Indians won’t risk.
Despite this drawback, he captures Pinter’s mirror of initial humane altruism that disintegrates because men betray trust and, always, the landed exercise power over the homeless (who, in this case, hates the foreigners taking over jobs). Pinter never indicates for sure whether Davies is the café worker he claims to be or just a tramp, whereas Mukherjee identifies him as a beggar. Given shelter from a cruel assault by a Good Samaritan, Davies doesn’t get a warm welcome from his brother but, believably, ingratiates himself with whoever seems in charge at any moment.
This triangle demands excellent actors in each role, which Mukherjee ensures (photo), and cleverly makes them adopt three distinct vocal registers: the loudmouth Davies by Debesh (the homonym a fortuitous coincidence!) Roychowdhury, Anirban Chakrabarti as the feeble-pitched kindly older brother who survived electric-shock treatment, and Tathagata Chaudhuri his gruff junior, a promoter of sorts. I congratulate Pradip Patra for recreating Pinter’s rundown interior minutely, up to the leaking roof, though I visualized an even bigger junkheap. Mukherjee avoids the climactic smashing of the Buddha statue which, however, is an essential shocker and could be simulated with a little sleight of hand and sound.
How not to do Pinter? Bibhaban Theatre Academy’s Chār Deyāler Madhye, inaugurating their 24th intimate theatre festival, demonstrates it. “Inspired” by Ashes to Ashes (1996), director Supriyo Samajdar does one thing right by placing its intensity in the small space of Tripti Mitra Natyagriha, though thereby divesting it of its ironically genteel countryside set. The charged lines also get through, describing another facet of Pinter’s recurrent concern with violence: beginning with a sado-masochistic relationship, moving into suggested images of deportation, genocide and Nazis taking away babies from mothers boarding trains to concentration camps.
But like I said, one must respect Pinter’s script. Instead of a couple on stage, Samajdar splits the woman into two actresses (Shipra Mukherjee and Bidisha Sen) without any logic. Why, then, doesn’t he split the man (Swarnendu Sen) as well? Pinter justifiably wanted daylight gradually diminishing into a dark room with two lamps but Samajdar ignores that stage direction. And he adds emotive background music like most Bengalis love to, which Pinter would have railed against for sentimentalizing his target of man’s inhumanity to man.
30 June 2025