Reviews

Reviews

MAHATMA BANAM GANDHI

By now we should have had a Bengali version of Ajit Dalvi’s Marathi Gandhi viruddh Gandhi, especially since the original production directed by Chandrakant Kulkarni came here in 1997, and

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QUARANTINE | ALL MY SONS

While that modern classic, Death of a Salesman, continues returning in Bengali incarnations owing to its growing relevance, Arthur Miller’s other plays have also seen revivals lately. A View from

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CHAKSHUDAN | SUFFOCATION

The relative paucity of new Bengali playtexts leads many groups to dramatize short stories. Swapnamoy Chakraborty’s Chakshudān receives this treatment from Debasish Mukhopadhyay for South Kolkata Shrine. Set in Jharkhand,

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IT HAPPENED IN KHATIJA’S VILLAGE

My 50-year-old connection with The Red Curtain has led me to associate their productions with scrupulous rigour, a combination of artistic dedication and disciplined teamwork that provided a model for

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Reviews

BYAPIKA BIDAY | MANMAYI GIRLS SCHOOL

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

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HARANER NAT-JAMAI | GHARE BAIRE

Two directors have revived their old dramatizations from Bengali fiction due to renewed political relevance. Arun Mukherjee first took up Manik Bandyopadhyay’s short story “Hārāner Nāt-jāmāi”, on the Tebhaga Movement,

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VISARJAN | KOI AUR RASTA

Little Thespian’s last two productions place wronged wives centrestage. In Visarjan, dramatized by Uma Jhunjhunwala from Premchand’s story “Suhāg kā Shav”, Subhadra encourages her husband to accept a scholarship to

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WHAT HAPPENED?

The pandemic led to much artistic soul-searching, especially in forms like theatre dependent on collective social interaction. Forced to isolate, some dramatists and directors addressed the unprecedented situation in new

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Reviews

POSTMASTER | JYAJAMASHAI

The minuscule Tripti Mitra Natyagriha has become a go-to site for small-scale and experimental Bengali theatre that flowers in close quarters rather than on the proscenium stage. Two productions there

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