Swapna Sandhani adapted a well-known script by JB Priestley to present modern-day Kolkata. She hits hard on the divide between the mansion-born ‘haves’ and the road-side ‘have-nots’ in her production
An Inspector Calls was a play penned by the English dramatist JB Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and next year in the UK.
As a three-act drama, the play takes place on a single night in 1912, focussing on the prosperous middle-class Birling family, who lives in a comfortable home in Brumley: “an industrial city in the north Midlands.” The family is visited by a man calling himself Inspector Goole — with sharp connotations of “Ghoul” — who questions the family about the suicide of a young working-class woman, Eva Smith (with various aliases). The family members are shown her faded photograph and interrogated individually, when they reluctantly reveal how each of them has been conducive to the hapless maiden’s exploitation, abandonment and social ruin: effectively leading to her death: as an expectant mother under total penury.
Thana Theke Aaschhi (I’m Coming from the Police-station), presented by Swapna Sandhani in NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav, transports the play, under Koushik Sen’s scintillating direction, into today’s West Bengal.
The play takes a dramatic turn when sub-inspector Tinkori Halder (played by comedian Kanchan Mullick) makes an unexpected entry and proceeds to interrogate the surprised Sen family, one by one. It transpires that the orphan Sandhya Roy was dismissed from office for supporting labour-strike by the senior Sen; was thrown out of a department store on false charges by the jealous Sen-girl; was seduced and raped by the junior Maity; was taken advantage of — with pretended love — and impregnated by the junior Sen; and, when desperately seeking succour from a women’s NGO headed by lady Sen, promptly thrown out on the streets. However, after Halder exits, the rest heave a sigh of huge relief, discovering that no such “policeman” ever existed! Was Halder only an apparition, formed by their collective conscienceIJ
Excerpts from interview with director:
After two Priestley adaptations: one on Bengal’s celluloid with the matinee idol Uttam Kumar and the other telefilm version with the cineaste Sabyasachi Chakrabarti — both donning the mythical sub inspector’s role — your play seems to be the third encounter with the celebrated script…
Yes, I have gone back to the original text and given it a drastic re-interpretation. I was emboldened by reading about Stephen Daldry’s war-based stage-view and thought of situating the play in Kolkata: amidst its sharp social stratification. My opening scene hits hard on the divide between the mansion-borne “haves” and the road-side “have-nots.”
Was this Priestley’s original vision when the Soviets staged it before anyone elseIJ
May be, yet it’s also my Kolkata where the passage of time is only accentuating the disconnect. On one side, the malls grow bigger and taller; on the other side, the foot-path crowd remains as pathetically miserable as ever!
But this social hiatus is not a recent phenomenon…
True, but it has grown into a monster and engulfs everything else. When Nehruvian socialism came, we thought all disparities would disappear overnight. But the chimera remained and the chasm has only widened…
You have created many climactic moments on stage, not easy to conjure up…
Because it’s a drawing room play, it tends to dissolve into prolonged dialogues. I have tried to break the monotony and create tensions, different resonances and suspenseful moments.
Your use of the backstage door is an old theatrical ploy…
Absolutely, it’s the ominous backdoor through which the Pinter-esque menace comes and goes! It’s the gate for the entry and exit of the ephemeral sub-inspector: magnified into shadowy goose steps. Perhaps I’ll keep it only for his “comedy of menace” in future and use wing side doors for other characters.