There was a time when I was much interested in reading and (whenever chance came) watching plays. A few years back I wrote an essay titled ‘Calcutta Theatre and Me’. As the title suggests it chiefly dealt with Bengali drama (much of which also contained adaptations of great western works) and a little bit of Hindi drama. Today I wish to reflect more on modern European drama, which I must admit have scarcely got opportunities to watch, but have made up to some extent by a little reading.
The English drama saw a very dull period after its stupendous flowering in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Ages with stalwarts like Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, and above all William Shakespeare. The Commonwealth and Cromwellian period between 1642 and 1660 hurt Theatre in such a manner that perhaps it did not recover for decades, if not centuries. The Restoration (of 1660) and the Glorious revolution (of 1688) did not help the cause of theatre much and we see usually mediocre plays (they were successful in that time but failed to make it to the great literary Canon) written even by likes of great poets of that age like John Dryden. The Romantic Age too did not witness any upward movement in drama, and none of the great Romatics succeeded when they attempted writing stage-able plays (though the closet play of Shelley ‘Prometheus Unbound’ is a masterpeiece. Like Marlowe, Shelley too died at 29, and we can only think of what promises and possibilities, even in drama (let alone poetry), lay had unfulfilled because of that.
In this sense, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of Realist drama with the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen as its flagbearer. ‘A Doll’s House’, Hedda Gabler, ‘Enemy of the People’ being examples of new kind of playwriting. This new movement was championed and in a way heralded by an essay, then not quite famous, George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1890 in which he went to the extent of saying that European drama can now turn its leaf from Shakespeare to Ibsen. That Shaw, in his characteristic shockingly bombastic style was never kind to Shakespeare (as if the latter needed any kindness) is only too well-known.
The next phase in English drama for nearly half a century was dominated by the maverick Bernard Shaw. Wonderful plays were created – Pygmallion, Androcles and the Lion, Doctor’s Dilemma, Arms and the Man among a long and celebrated list. Shaw was always didactic in his plays. Once he remarked (I am paraphrasing by memory) “people say Art should not be didactic, while I say it should only be that.” In Shaw language is nothing compared to the Elizabethan-Jacobean greats, but in substance and dealing with contemporary social morality he was a master. He often tore apart the shallowness and brazen snobbishness of the English upper and middle classes – say, judging people by their language as brilliantly depicted in Pygmallion. (Pygmallion was made into a fine film in 1938 or so, but its ending there is completely different to the radically rebellious ending in Shaw’s play. Shaw wrote a lengthy epilogue to establish and justify the ending, which is not in line with conventions of playwriting and theatre.)
In the post-wars Britain, which suddenly found itself having lost a glorious empire, there came an inevitable sense of incertitude, personally, socially, and politically. There was a greater socialist turn (already anticipated by Shaw) and shift from cultural elitism, and as a result more popular plays aimed at entertainment, came in currency. Theatre began to deal with issues of the working class and also that of domestic life (the dynamic of which was fast changing in the modern post-war economy). Theatre also got challenged from other other media like cinema and television, and it moved away in no insignificant way from ‘high brow’ art to entertainment, with nore musicals being produced. Thrillers also made an entry. It is no surprise that Agatha Chrisrie’s ‘Mousetrap’ (title adapted from the idea of the ‘play within the play’ in Hamlet) runs in London Westend for 72 years in succession, after its opening in 1952.
In the continent, many different things were being experimented with. The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ was a new phenomenon, best represented by the Irish-born French playwright Samuel Beckett. I have always felt that Beckett was a towering genius, greater than most other consideted in that hallowed category, as he did much of his creative work in two different langauges – French (which was not his mothertongue) and English. Most literary artists do their first-rate creative work in one langauge (they may write essays etc in another but not creative work) – though one has to admit that some exceptions are there – Karnad comes to my mind who wrote plays in Kannada and English, and long before that great Bengali writers like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt and Bankim Chatterjee.
I must admit that merely by attenpting to read or read about absurdist plays like Beckett’s path’breaking ‘Waiting for Godot’ I have not been able to get a hang over that genre. Surely, they are best seen than read, and I never got opportunity to watch any such performances.
But my own exposure and fascination is most towards the other great phenomenon in twentieth century European drama – that of ‘Epic Theatre’, the progenitor of which was the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht who impactfully wrote and staged plays for Berliner Ensemble before moving to America, escaping from the Nazi persecution. Brecht employed the Marxian concept of ‘Alienation’ to create a theatrical practice that was not seen before. It broke the illusion of the stage and spoke to the audience in several direct ways.
A few days back as I was watching Mrinal Sen’s 1974 classic ‘Chorus’, I could not help feeling a marked Brechtian influence in that work. In that film, Sen had collaborated with iconic Bengali playwright Mohit Chattopadhyay to create this magic. Like most of Sen films, it served its purpose to disturb, which I believe was also Brecht’s dictum in his theatrical practice.
I have been privileged to watch several Brech plays in Bengali – ‘Good Person of Szechwan’ (I forget the group which did it), Galileo directed by Anjan Dutt (the last scene in which Galileo comes with his face painted red is etched in my memory which I understood to be an image of being disgraced, and the Three Penny Opera directed by Chanda Dutt which had the iconic opening song ‘Mack the Knife’ which has been rendered by a variety of artists like Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. I have seen Brecht’s ‘Mother courage and her Children’ in a filmic adaptation directed by Utpal Dutt, in which Shobha Sen (Utpal Dutt’s wife and an actor par excellence played the protagonist with the story set in North Bengal’s tea gardens.) It is perhaps only Kolkata where Brecht plays are still staged once in while, beside academic bastions like the National School.