Bengali theatre has resurrected its links with three major 20th-century European dramatists: Sławomir Mrożek of Poland and Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame, of Italy. Both the satirical source plays considered here took potshots at the police of their countries, a favourite target of Indian theatre too (remember Habib Tanvir in Charandas Chor?). Lest our local counterparts take umbrage, let us console them with the reassurance that the most respected foreign writers think similarly.
Actually, Mrożek’s very first play, Police (1958), zeroed in on authoritarianism, which the police only serve to further. In its absurdist regime, citizens have stopped criticizing for fear of their fate if they speak up honestly. Since everyone ostensibly approves of the leaders, the police have no dissenters left to arrest. Even the last political prisoner agrees to sign on the dotted line to secure his release. The jailor suddenly realizes that his own job is on the line if he has nothing to do, so he orders his sergeant to become an agent-provocateur. What transpires would delight the Marx Brothers (though maybe not all Marxists), Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar, all famous for tongue-in-cheek content.
Arpita Ghosh renders the English translation into Pulish faithfully, with some grim topical embellishments: outside the jail, the farmers no longer smile and a big new temple has been constructed. For greater hilarity, she should restore Mrożek’s stage directions requiring the policemen of all ranks to sport outsize mustachios and to stand up at attention whenever the King’s name is uttered. Heading Pancham Vaidic’s cast, Rahul Sengupta (jailor) and Korak Samanta (sergeant, in mufti in the photo) pair off for perfect pandemonium. The admirably mechanical supernumeraries should take care they don’t misstep while marching.
Fo, himself a Communist, riled the ruling Left every so often. In Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! (1974), newly credited to both him and Franca Rame (which Nandipat doesn’t seem to know), they attacked artificially inflated prices; angry homemakers protest, and grow into a mob of shoplifters ransacking the stores. Two of these women, best friends (one of them originally enacted by Rame), have to hide their snatched groceries from their politically virtuous husbands as well as the investigating cops. Their brainwave, followed by the mayhem that ensues (photo), creates a classic Fo–Rame laugh riot.
The group Class Theatre had staged it as Bārti Dām Debo Nā in the early 1990s, but in Pet-I Case (you have to see it to get the pun), director Bimal Chakraborty transposes its slapstick farcicality descended from Italian commedia dell’arte into a Bengali middle-class setting. Now that completer English translations are available, the adapter, Bismoy Roy, could consult them for a more accurate script. While I understand that Chakraborty wants to distribute roles to more members of the group, the Fo–Rame device of having one actor identifiably caricature four secondary parts—sergeant, inspector, coffin bearer and father-in-law—entertains better. Nevertheless, the Nandipat team makes it great fun to watch, with Monalisa Chattopadhyay and Titas in their elements as leading ladies to make Rame proud.
16 July 2024