ROOPANTAR of Paramik Barrackpore: an adaptation of Max Frisch

 

ROOPANTAR of Paramik Barrackpore: an adaptation of Max Frisch (staged on 1 June 2016)

Paramik presented the play ROOPANTAR at the Academy of Fine Arts under the direction of Subhajit Bandopadhyay. The play has been written by Anirban Sen, one of the promising young Bengali playwrights. He has adapted this play from Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch’s drama The Fire Raisers also known as The Firebugs. Long back a group had staged this play in its translated form.

The original story of two arsonists in the garb of salesmen coming to a house of a businessman and planning to blow it up, and is helped by the owner of the house, who represents the common ‘everyman’, and who is totally ignorant about the plan, has been transformed into a different narrative by Anirban. In his version a revolting ‘terrorist’ party worker decides to visit every household and awaken the good sense of the common man. So, Frisch’s ‘everyman’, who prefers to stay naïve and avoid facing the looming dangers all around, and yearns for a comfortable bourgeoise life, becomes the general common man here, Frisch showed that this complacency, moral irresponsibility unknowingly acknowledges a totalitarian system. In Anirban’s story we find a very highly placed bureaucrat who as part of the government enjoys all the fruits of power, and nurtures the organised corruption and decadence of the society. He also incites his own daughter to take to dishonest and corrupt ways to promote herself in her field of work. But the daughter who due to the upbringing that she got from her mother resist this. Anirban tells us that lady’s father is a communist believing in strong moral values. After the previous change of government, he is shown to be coerced by a lumpen student leader. At the end of the play, we see that youth revolting against the bureaucrat and go out on his mission to change the system, but is killed in a police encounter. And the wife of the bureaucrat, too, take the path to bring change. At the end a few questions come up in the viewer’s mind. If the youth is not Frisch’s arsonist, then why was the terror ambience built up at the beginning? Was it to suggest a fake encounter? Or why was the youth shown to be a Muslim?                  

Frisch had written this drama in the early ‘50s, almost at the same time that Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros. These black comedies had the touch of absurdity and were like parables aimed at Fascism and Nazism. As the situations throughout the world stands, these forces are very much active. But Anirban just missed the bus as his play though had the political touch, had drifted to a melodrama that diverts the viewers’ point of view.

Subhajit has, I should say, very unnecessarily stressed on designing. With a very promising start the play then meanders into a mire of confusion. The chair, table, stool and three bamboos draped in plastic do not help in the stage craft. The entrances and the exits are kept non-specific. The use of a trolley in the conversation sequence of the mother with her daughter is unexplainably pointless. Excepting for Saheb Sanyal’s lights, the stage design nor the background score help the play.

As the cast-list was not available individual performances can not be discussed. It is presumed that Bratin Gangopadhyay did the bureaucrat and Swagata Sengupta the wife. Both appropriately did their designated roles. It can also be assumed that Subhajit did the youth’s part. He could well bring the casualness of the character. Others did as told to.               

In the next Blog we will be discussing ABU HOSSAIN of Nandiranga staged on 10 June 2026.

See you till then.