Monday,11,2019

Published on March 14th, 2015 in The Telegraph India.

Shakespearean tragedies formed the point of departure for two Sanskriti Sagar presentations, reviving the old debate about fidelity in adaptations. As Shakespeare belongs to common domain, everyone possesses the absolute right to do anything they want with his plays, videlicet, Bhardwaj's movie versions. However, when directors choose a Shakespearean text, do they not have the responsibility to stay true to his intention or spirit, though not necessarily to the letter? How much liberty should they take with him if they capitalize on his name?

These tricky questions bothered me on The Company Theatre/Cinematograph's Nothing like Lear from Mumbai and the local Shriek of Silence's The East Side Story, both titles dependent on invoking Shakespeare's works. Rajat Kapoor's disclaimer, "Nothing like", deftly disowns the link, yet he bills it as "based on King Lear". Assuming that very few viewers today know their Lear (or Shakespeare, for that matter), does Kapoor give it a reasonably faithful reworking? No. By collapsing virtuous Cordelia and the ingrates Goneril and Regan into one daughter on whom the father showers love but she throws him out, Kapoor directs a travesty of the story. Furthermore, the same father has a brother (one of them illegitimate, the other not), and Gloucester's blinding becomes part of his narrative. Anyone taking these home as the plot of Lear can demand a refund for being misled.

Actually, Nothing like Lear misled me as well. I saw Kapoor's Clown Lear in 2011 when it premiered at Odeon with Atul Kumar as the soloist, and did not fancy it. The new name, actor (Vinay Pathak) and subtitle ("devised performance") made me believe that Kapoor had completely revamped it, deserving a second chance. But the script had not changed. Pathak (picture) delivered a virtuosic turn, a more tragic characterization than Kumar's and arguably better on the improvised bits (which nowadays come too close to stand-up comedies for comfort), but otherwise it remains the same. Sadly, I cannot ask for a refund because I received a complimentary.

East Side Story misleads, too. One obviously expects connections with West Side Story, which had magnificently adapted Romeo and Juliet to New York (writer-director Chandan Sen wrongly calls it "West end" and the longest-running Broadway show), but it fails on all fronts. Sen's source was a live musical, but he plays back a soundtrack to which his fresh young cast lip-sync - the bane of Indian so-called musicals. Incredibly, the rival Calcutta clubs speak an identical English-Bengali patois, despite coming from a gated community and the slums outside, respectively. Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers do not get as much attention as Sen's focus is on sociopolitical conflict. Most shockingly, it does not end in their deaths, but with a very hopeful song.