On 1st and 2nd July 2014, Thespo at Prithvi hosted a young theatre group from Kolkata called Mad About Drama (M.A.D). Their play WITH LOVE, CALCUTTA as the endearing title suggests is about their city. Co-written and co-directed by Aritra Sengupta and Ayanti Ghosh, the play features a series of vignettes that want to reveal facets about Kolkata and its people. Some of it is broad-brushed and some of it more thoughtful. The play begins with an affected monologue by Aritra Sengupta set against an opening set of screened images of no particular relevance. Indeed for some moments, the geometric designs and the sharp outlines of a modern metropolis seem far removed from the rough-and-tumble that characterise Indian cities, Kolkata being no exception. But soon enough we encounter a documentary filmmaker (Soham Majumdar) and his companion (Anisha Mandal). With their interaction the production starts to look credible. Soham Majumdar, though he needs to be more audible, was the most unaffected actor of the lot and that was very nice. He is not wearing his part on his sleeve and his 'matter-of-fact' attitude works in his favour.
The vignettes range in theme and tone and the Bengalis in the audience could appreciate the scattered Bangla; references that they could identify with. Two of these vignettes stand out. There's a father-son piece which recalls the glory days of theatre in erstwhile Calcutta during the time of master theatre-makers like Utpal Dutt. The father (Soumya Mukherji), an anachronism to his son (Ayan Bhattacharya), livens up the old times as he subtly yet pointedly reprimands and reminds his son of what acting and being on stage is truly like. The piece is nostalgic and simultaneously a paean to an actor. Soumya Mukherji as the forgotten actor and the drunken father invests a lot of emotion in the piece and makes it personal and heartwarming. The mad man sequence is yet another vignette that has some telling moments. Soumya Mukherji once again makes an appearance as the mad man. He comes across as the strongest actor in the ensemble, albeit a little dramatic. The piece also features Ayan Bhattacharya and Soumendra Bhattacharya as the two old men whose party's politics is perhaps irrelevant now.
Sayandeep Roy's live music that he plays with his mandolin uplifts the production and gives it a resonant character. As the documentary filmmaker and his companion make a reappearance in the second act, the play in its effort to convey the city comes together. In the filmmaker's misgivings about the city, we sense loss but also a hardened sense of reality.
It so happened that I had just completed Paul Theroux's eminently engaging and incisive novel "A Dead Hand' that is set in Kolkata on the day I saw this play. Theroux's book which revolves around a crime investigated by the novel's writer-protagonist who is also the narrator, recreates a living city with all its squalidness. There is nothing remotely romantic about Theroux's description and it is palpable and undeniable.
What we miss in this young duo's play is that inspite of its best intent, its characters in most of the vignettes move on the surface of things, never fully communicating something more vivid about themselves or their city except in rare instances. The characters sometimes also border on being caricatures as in the piece about the two socialites (Sharmistha Pandey and Sreeja Ghosh) and the girl from Durgapur (Najrin Islam), whom the socialites see as inferior. The play's latent ambition and unrealised potential is not to be missed though. Through cracks like in the piece about the socialites or when the documentary filmmaker and his companion speak of growing up in different parts of the city, we sense that location and geography are key to the way people live and think and how migration can create new and sometimes fractured identities. The old is replaced but never quite fully.
Youthful gushing and earnestness accompanied the announcement of the play but it was so sincere that it was charming. The Directors' Note intellectualises the production with its use of video projections (the video works well in the Riot sequence where a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy rediscover their love for each other). It was nevertheless nice to be in the company of young people who are attempting to write and create theatre that is meaningful to them and which is rooted in their culture. The ensemble as a whole works and all the actors do their bit, sometimes playing multiple characters.
Thespo deserves a special acknowledgement for giving a platform to young groups such as M.A.D and for recognising that talent when discovered must be shown.
List Your Play