Adapted from Mahesh Dattani : SADICHHAR RANGBADAL by Bengaluru’s Smaranik

Adapted from Mahesh Dattani : SADICHHAR RANGBADAL by Bengaluru’s Smaranik

Mahesh Dattani writes plays in English and has made a distinctive style of his own in the English drama scene.  He is perhaps the only Indian playwright who has written for BBC radio apart from being the first English playwright to be awarded with Sahitya Akademi Award and that too at a very young age. He is deeply rooted to the soil that has bred his cultural being and that gives his plays a very well balanced theme touching both the worlds – Eastern and Western. He deals with very sensitive social topics that are though common, not much taken up for circumspection. 

His first full length play, Where There’s a Will written in 1986 has been translated and adapted into Bengali by the esteemed thespian-director Meghnad Bhattacharya as SADICHHAR RANGBADAL for the Bengaluru group Smaranik. Smaranik is a new group though the director, Sayandeb Bhattacharya and some other members have had exposures on the Kolkata stage earlier. No matter, the group put up a good show and proved a lot of well done home work.

The play is designated as a drawing room comedy which in the hand-out of the production also is mentioned as the ‘comedy of the last wish’. The form of the play is certainly as is designated for the play is designed in the apartment space specifically in the drawing room with bits in the bedrooms of a family. The content deals with the predicament of the family centred on a will expressing the last wishes of the head of the family. Though the theme has a pinch of murder mystery, it deals with the positions of the wife, mistress and the daughter-in-law in a patriarchal system. Whatever the description, the play is no doubt a comedy that has a strong base on the play of the dialogues. And this flavour of the Mahesh work has been kept by Meghnad in his translation with very ingenious use of the Bengali language.

The production can boast of good acting as all the members were diligent to do their bits to the best. Apart from a congested stage and faulty lighting, the other aspects of the production scored well. The dress designing needed a special mention. Lastly, it is Sayandeb who deserves applause for handling a play in its true elements.