MATHUR | SWADESH-KATHA

Group: Paikpara Akhor

 

Māthur

Dramatist-director: Bhadra Basu

Recommended: ★★★★

 

 

 

 

Swadesh-kathā

Dramatist: Sounava Bose

Director: Asit Basu

Review:

The new productions by Paikpara Akhor have put the group back in the limelight with its special brand of research-based theatre under directors Bhadra and Asit Basu, both exploring the cultural and historical roots of the Bengali stage.

In Māthur, Bhadra brings to Kolkata audiences an authentic taste of rural devotional Palagan, specifically the Vaishnav Lila-kirtan genre celebrating Krishna’s life predominantly through song. In this case, she chooses the Pala (or thematic suite) of Māthur, where Radha pines in Vrindavan after Krishna takes on royal duties in Mathura, and a sakhi volunteers to bring him back to her. Bhadra compiles impeccably a sequence of padābali from Bengali, Brajabuli, Hindi and even Sanskrit, delivered solo by her daughter Anandee, reminding me of the latter’s multilingual fluency as Gauhar Jan in Akhor’s Jān-e-Kalkattā a dozen years ago.

Anandee sings in perfect pitch virtually nonstop for 90 minutes, and pronounces all the languages without a false syllable. Māthur ranks as an even greater musical achievement because she has no supporting actor. She performs as Radha, her worried companions, the one named Nayan Shyama who goes to Mathura on the mission, and Krishna himself. Although the dramatic element is less important in Palagan, we suggest that she could differentiate the exchanges between Radha and the sakhis more than she does – compared to her clearly delineated portraits of Nayan Shyama and Krishna and her perfect evocation of spiritual reunion at the end. My personal preference for a sarangi or esrāj instead of the harmonium (besides the obligatory flute) is admittedly a difficult ask in today’s climate of accompaniment.

 

In Swadesh-kathā, the script comes from Sounava Bose, recognized for his research bent. His subject, one of the fathers of Bengali professional theatre on whom nobody has thrown enough light: Upendranath Das, the dramatist-director arrested in 1876 for showing the murder of a British magistrate in Surendra-Binodini. Debnarayan Gupta had written Bidrohi Nāyak about his idealism. But Sounava depicts the love of Das and actress Sukumari Datta (alias Golap Sundari) parallel to her failed marriage to actor Goshthabihari Datta, Das’s subsequent departure for England and his homecoming into obscurity. As early as 1875 Sukumari had co-authored a play, Apurba Sati, with a mysterious Asutosh Das, who, Sounava speculates imaginatively, was actually Upendranath, living under that assumed name. This seems farfetched because Upendranath already had a pseudonym, Durgadas Das, and also wrote under his real name after returning to Calcutta.

In fact, Sounava should mention Das’s radical, proscribed and little-known later comedy Dādā o Āmi (1888), where a progressive parent encourages a premarital romance, which incensed the conservative Atul Mitra to satirize it with the riposte, Gādhā o Tumi! Das’s conversion to Brahmo beliefs also demands treatment, supporting his reformist modernism. On the other hand, Sounava does well to introduce the Marathi Chapekar brothers, the first Indian revolutionaries to assassinate a British officer (even though Das had died before their deed), since they preceded the Bengali extremists about whom Bengalis are so proud. Director Asit Basu leads as a mild-mannered Das, with Bhadra (Sukumari) and Anup Kumar Das (the much-maligned Goshtha) heading the rest of the cast.

 

3 August 2022