On the third evening of the Natyadhara Theatre Festival here on Wednesday, a play titled ‘Pilisojo’, an adaptation of Norman Mekinnel’s play ‘Bishop’s Candlesticks’ was staged. The play that shows a conflict between a noble and an evil hearts cast a spell on the audience.
While the credit for the Odia adaptation goes to Basant Satpathy, directional credit goes to veteran theatre personality Ananta Mahapatra.
The play has two protagonists. One is a Sadhu, who is so kind and generous that he has already given away his valuables, except his proud possession, a candlestick, a gift from his dying mother. The other one is a thief, who has served ten years imprisonment. One winter night the thief enters into the Sadhu’s house and demands food. Sadhu gives him not only food but also shelter for that night. Taking advantage of Sadhu’s absence, the thief decamps with the candlestick. Sadhu though feels sad for the lost stick but the next moment he thinks, as he usually does, the candlestick may be more useful to the thief than to him. However the police catch the thief and produce him before Sadhu. Instead of awarding punishment, the noble heart forgives him declaring him as his friend. And to the utter surprise to the thief and the police, he says he himself has given the candlestick to the thief.
The nobility of Sadhu turns the beast of the thief into a human being. Anant Mahapatra was brilliant in storytelling. “There was scope for use of more dialogues, more music and more light designs with a comparatively bigger set. But I restrict it to minimal. And it goes well with the audience,” he said.
Prasant Mahapatra and Shiva Shankar Tripathy once again exhibited their potential. Tripathy observed his character and that of Sadhu have some uniformity. And this goes a long way in tackling typicality of the character, he said.