Nandikar’s 42nd National Theatre Festival began with several ambitious Bengali adaptations and interpretations that I had not yet seen. Of them, the most notable is Naihati Natya Samanway Samity’s Pherāri Phauj, directed by Debasish. One of Utpal Dutt’s earliest originals, from 1961 during his Minerva period, it has not attracted as much notice as his latter-day classics, but Debasish brings it back to our attention, thanks to his own keenness on revolutionary history. Set in 1930s Bengal, referencing Mukunda Das and Surya Sen, it depicts a rural cell of freedom fighters plotting against the British.
We see how Dutt presented a humane perspective, pitting personal impulses against political orders—asking if an activist must renounce contact with his family completely, and if we should condemn him for revealing names under horrendous inquisition. On the other hand, Debasish does not control Dutt’s weak points: the incredibility of the razor-sharp Inspector Dasgupta falling for the prostitute Radharani’s wiles, and the massive melodrama of the hero Ashok’s angst.
Still, he ensures that the tragedy of the failed revolutionaries does not diminish, heightened by the gruesome violence committed on Ashok, perhaps the longest and most graphic torture scene in all drama. Buddhadeb Das excels in this role created by the illustrious Satya Bandopadhyay, rising from an ordinary man to martyred victim. Partha Bandyopadhyay matches him as the antagonist, the vicious officer Dasgupta, personifying the Indian police as Raj henchmen.
Among the supporting parts, Debshankar Haldar aces the dual opportunity normally not granted him, to portray a comic sycophant who is actually the underground leader, following in Dutt’s own footsteps; and Debjani Sinha impresses as the shrewd Radharani, also performing according to the situation. In the absence of a trapdoor that could function as the rebels’ tunnel, Debasish ingeniously carves a space below the apron at the feet of front-row viewers, cleverly discomfiting them.
Suman Mukhopadhyay’s direction of Uncle Vanya titled Bhanu, based by Ujjwal Chattopadhyay on Chekhov’s modern masterpiece, owes its premise to David Mamet’s Broadway adaptation, Vanya on 42nd Street, without acknowledging its source, albeit name-checking Mamet in the opening scene. Mamet composed it as a rehearsal in the orchestra pit of an abandoned playhouse. Anyone watching Louis Malle’s film of it (his last movie) on YouTube can tell Mukhopadhyay’s debt to it, down to such details as Vanya sleeping on a bench at the beginning or Elena taking Astrov’s pen from his breast pocket at the end.
Mamet’s metaphorical frame of socio-theatrical decay doesn’t suit Kolkata’s active prosceniums, where it becomes a totally dispensable add-on, exemplified by the two silent prompters sitting wing-side, who disappear in the second half—so disposable, a living antithesis of what we in theatre call “Chekhov’s gun”. Mukhopadhyay should have repurposed a venue like the derelict Circarina to reflect similar ruin. Moreover, he garnishes two loudly-delivered songs onto the text, capitalizing on his cast’s singing talents, but ignoring Chekhov’s clear indication that the Professor doesn’t like sounds disturbing him. Instead of all these interpolations, Mukhopadhyay should reinstate the nurse, deleted by Chattopadhyay wrongly considering her as superfluous, and restore Vanya’s environmental concerns in full—the play’s most immediate theme harking back to its first draft, The Wood Demon.
Other departures from Chekhov also bother me. Vanya does get angry, but nowhere does he use expletives like Bhanu (Debshankar Haldar) regularly swears in front of his mother, utterly indefensible in cultured Bengali society. Here, the two men go overboard in kissing Ela/Elena in Acts 2 and 3, whereas Chekhov kept it restrained. Nevertheless, Mukhopadhyay himself acts Atanu/Astrov with admirable Chekhovian understatement, and Bidipta Chakraborty as Sukanya/Sonya shines in conveying hidden emotions, embodying Chekhov’s subject of hopelessly lost lives. The rest, all fine actors in their own right, do not compare with Malle’s cast, the high standards of whom have spoilt me. Technically, standing spotlights in the wings that throw shadows on faces in dialogue and remote-mike noises disrupt the flow.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein means much in our times. We can read it as God so disgusted by man as to reject him, or its opposite, man feeling so betrayed by his maker that he wreaks vengeance on Him (in both cases, we remember that Frankenstein moulded not just his Creature but also started work on its female companion), or the Creature as Satan (he refers to himself as “the fallen angel”), or its contemporary avatars—scientists inventing androids and artificial intelligence (who learn Large Language Models) that go amok. To these, dramatizer-director Srabanti Bhattacharya imposes a socialistic interpretation not supported by the novel, where Frankenstein had died on board the ship and the monster had vowed to immolate himself. Instead, Bhattacharya shows the latter carrying his unconscious master away, exhorting us to join hands for a classless, egalitarian future. All well and good, but a distortion of the original.
She changes some other elements too, like Frankenstein’s brother into a sister; and the Creature killing the brother in cold blood, but not here, with the intent of treating the Creature sympathetically. We must always bear in mind that Shelley repeatedly shows the monster as violent and seeking revenge, murdering Frankenstein’s friend and wife as well. The character seems tailor-made for Joyraj Bhattacharya, who displays all his physical skills catatonically to great effect; the other dramatis personae serve as satellites around him.
1 January 2026