Invited by Sanskriti Sagar, venue hosts of Swapna-sandhani’s Marx in Kolkata, I looked forward to the much-publicized play, the first in English by this Bengali group. Press features about it generated much inaccurate information, which I should correct first. In one interview, director Koushik Sen said (one hopes a misquote by the newspaper) that the dramatist, Howard Zinn, wrote the original Marx in Soho about the US recession of 2008; others dated it to 1999. In fact, Marx in Soho premiered in 1995 in its initial full-cast draft. Zinn then revised it into a monologue published in 1999.
The less-than-informed, perennially-excitable media should also know that the play has a long history in India. I heard about it first when Mumbai director Manoj Shah did it as Karl Marx in Kalbadevi (2013) in two versions, Gujarati and Hinglish. My own English author, Vithal Rajan, translated and enacted it as Marx in Hyderabad (2014). In Mumbai again, Rangrez revived it in Hindi as Karl Marx Mumbai Men (2015). All these occurred years before Atul Tiwari adapted it in Hindi as Jambudwipe Bharatkhande Maharshi Marx ke Hathkande (2022), the text from which Sen translated his script. Even in Bengali, Dhaka had already staged it in 2021.
Zinn had swivelled a solo spotlight on the neglected aspect of Marx as a family man, caring the best he could for his wife Jenny (who transcribed in fair many of his illegible writings) and children while continuing his intellectual pursuits. Sen expands this appealing history by adding the extra dramatis personae but follows the above-mentioned Indian precursors in transplanting the locale from Soho in New York to Kolkata in the 21st century for Marx’s time-travel visit, where he confronts incredible India’s mall culture. I had really hoped that Sen would interrogate Marx’s unambiguously pro-colonial and rather racist essay titled “The Future Results of British Rule in India” (1853), but he let the opportunity go abegging.
Instead, in an interpolation presumably motivated by the need to create a full-length production, but which boggles the Marxist imagination, Sen introduces Mephistopheles to dialogue with Marx in the second half. Despite Marx’s youthful fascination for Goethe’s Faust (not “Faustus” as misspoken here), this shatters Marx’s dialectic ideology. After all, Mephistopheles is one of Satan’s minions, and Satan is God’s adversary; Satan can’t exist independent of God. Thus, referring to Mephistopheles implies a tacit acceptance of God as the Supreme Other, which makes a mockery of Marx’s disbelief in God. Alternatively, it equates Marx and Mephisto as anti-God—even more absurd, because Sen shows Mephisto as capitalistic Mammon incarnate, Marx’s anathema. And by citing the conservative Paul Kengor’s The Devil and Karl Marx in opposition to Zinn, Sen effectively falls into Kengor’s trap of acknowledging God as omnipotent.
The performances vary, the Marxes convincing the most: Jayant Kripalani (Karl) looks rightly clueless in Kolkata and thoughtful at home, where Ditipriya Sarkar (Jenny) and Shaili Bhattacharjee (daughter Eleanor) in contrasting ways prove their invaluable contribution to everything. As Mephisto, Srijit Mukherji seems as perplexed as me about the justification for his character. Sanchayan Ghosh’s Constructivist set in the background works well, but has little to do afterwards, overshadowed completely by the coups de théâtre of utilizing Birla Sabhagar’s revolving stage and multiple trapdoors, long fallen into disuse awaiting visionary designers. Tellingly, it takes tech to bring alive Mephisto from the underworld.
For an earlier, original drama on Marx in Kolkata, read my review of Ichheymoto’s Mantu o Marx.
3 September 2025