After Othello and Hamlet, Bengali theatre now presents Shakespeare’s two other great tragedies, perhaps the first time that all four have appeared in Kolkata in quick succession.
Sarabhuj’s Macbeth captivates viewers by the audiovisual spectacle stamped with the hallmark of folk authenticity that director Tarun Pradhan has always specialized in. Applying the performatory idioms of the western districts of Bengal, Joy Prakash Roy’s design of entirely eco-sustainable material like grass, twigs and bamboo for costumes and accessories, and Subhadeep Guha’s primal percussive sound effects, Pradhan creates a stunning display worth studying for its own sake while remaining true to Shakespeare’s supernatural ethos. He portrays Lady Macbeth (Maya in his version) as one of four Witches (see photo)—in itself not a novel interpretation, but bringing the Witches’ agency in motivating Macbeth into centrality.
However, the priority given to performance downplays the text, depriving Macbeth, particularly, of some of his world-famous lines, and consequently his characterization. Pradhan draws mainly on Shamsul Haq’s translation interspersed with insertions from Dattatreya Datta, but neglects these speeches, exchanges and soliloquies: “Come you Spirits … unsex me here”, “Pity, like a naked newborn babe”, “We will proceed no further in this”, “Is this a dagger which I see before me”, “Had he not resembled/My father as he slept”, “Infirm of purpose!”, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. He also drops the sleepwalking scene.
I hope he reinserts these to strike the right balance by doing justice to the poetry, which he himself says he respects in the programme note. To manage the extra time required, he could delete episodes of his own invention, like the extra Porter introducing the play, or Duncan’s guard given drink and getting drunk. A few of his interpolations can remain, such as the assassin’s ruse of a disguise to murder Banquo. But the crucial Banquet still demands work: it is too dark at present, and the torch-lit ghost doesn’t frighten us at all.
Inaugurating Nandikar’s 41st National Theatre Festival, Anjan Dutt’s avowedly “last” (again!) production, Āro Ektā Lear, is “inspired by Shakespeare”, which is a little like Lear having his kingdom and bisecting it too. Because it gives Dutt the licence to write his own Lear, like so many others before him, from the notorious Nahum Tate to the grotesquely violent Edward Bond. Yet he reverts to translating much of the source too, making a comparison not only possible but necessary.
First, by adopting diverse clown makeup as a general rule, Dutt follows the influential Jan Kott’s ludic, absurdist interpretation—nothing new, and explicitly labelling Lear as more foolish than his own Fool, but undermining Dutt’s own aim to enact him as corruption incarnate. Equally, Dutt uses his favourite Brechtian epic devices of bare stage, one chair, scrolls identifying scenes (one of them erroneously stating “All the world is a stage”) and deja-vu video footage on the backdrop depicting concentration camps and Partition refugees. I appreciate his highlighting of the random, arbitrary cruelty of rulers and his visualization of the Storm as one in the mind, where Lear invokes nature to destroy all of mankind. But I cannot understand why he omits the deaths of Cornwall, Gloucester and Lear.
Dutt hasn’t worked through the internal logic and continuity of several details. For instance, lipstick gets smudged after kisses, but nobody notices; Gloucester and Lear can’t recognize Edgar and Kent respectively even though the latter’s voices don’t change. Other additions seem quite pointless: Lear’s obsession with his belly, his gratuitous homoeroticism with the Fool, the reference to Edmund’s mother as a prostitute (taking the common Elizabethan abuse “whoreson” too literally), Edmund’s graphic sex with Goneril and Regan.
Onstage, Sudipa Basu and Kamalika Banerjee make a matching pair of evil sisters. Backstage, Chhanda Dutt merits applause for her unusual costumes plan of housecoats with tights underneath, and Neel Dutt’s heavy-metal soundtrack suits some of the scenes.
28 February 2025