Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, “My Last Duchess”, has often been lauded as a comment on the subjugation of women in Victorian England. It has also been studied across the Anglophone world as a statement on the possessiveness of a narcissist who killed his wife for breaching the moral code that he had laid down for her. Paramik Barrackpore’s Phans (Noose) — produced “in the shadow of” Browning’s poem — has adapted the poem with such ease that every Browning admirer would enjoy it.
Anirban Sen, who has scripted Phans, appropriated the original idea and turned it upside down. Firstly, he relocates the idea to contemporary West Bengal — a 16th-century city in northern Italy becomes a village in the Muslim-dominated parts of the state. Secondly, and more significantly, the Duke of Ferrara makes way for Hamida (Chalantika Gangopadhyay), a self-sufficient woman who manipulates her sexuality to lure men of her choice. Thus Sabiq (Priyankar Mondal), Ajgar (Debabrata Paul), Rahamat (Sourav Dutta) — representing three sections of menfolk in a village that is coming to terms with modernity — come into her life one by one. The moment she finds them straying or showing interest in other women, Hamida ties the noose around their neck and strangles them to death. She has regrets, but repentance is absent from her dictionary.
Suvojit Bandyopadhyay designs the production with a meticulous eye towards the psychological shifts in the lead character. He trifurcates her role (the other two played adequately by Puja Bhattacharya and Gracy Chowdhury). By staging parallel activities onstage, he plays hide-and-seek with space and time, underlining the complex realities of Hamida’s existence. Saikat Manna’s light design — muted and shadowy — illuminates the dark crevices of a diabolic mind. Live music by Sourav Dasgupta, Souvik Haldar, Sukanya Sen, Souhrid Roy, especially some soulful singing of Islamic numbers by Dasgupta, lifts the production. But it was Gangopadhyay who stole the show at Minerva Theatre on September 29 with a finely nuanced performance mixing subtlety with ruthlessness in the lead role.
