Portraying violence against women on stage can seem like a low-hanging fruit in these politically-charged times but it is often a tightrope walk — requiring an adroit balancing act between the depiction of female characters as helpless damsels and the necessity of allowing them some agency. Kalyani Kalamandalam walks this fine line admirably, drawing upon Manik Bandopadhyay’s stories to craft a simple but powerful narrative. Dramatised and directed by Somnath Gupta, Stree — not related to its more famous Bollywood namesake — is an evocative play about the trials and tribulations of three wives.

The stories of Sarala (Jayita Bose), Jhuma (Ananya Das) and Kalpana (Bristi Sanyal) are shown simultaneously on stage, with one scene in one character’s life following an occurrence in another’s. Though their lives never intersect, the common thread of unmet desires and unsatisfied aspirations criss-cross the lives of each, affecting them and the men in their lives. There can be no complaints about the performance of any of the three protagonists — each actress crosses the proverbial t’s and dots the i’s; the audience is left with life-like portrayals of three women, each of whom has distinct but common objections about the hand that ‘fate’ (patriarchy) has dealt them. Tanmoy Bhattacharya as Jhuma’s odious, gambler husband turns in an excellent performance as well. But the rest of the cast is markedly average — Trishit Maitra as the burglar husband of Kalpana might even be termed needlessly dramatic, enacting exaggerated physical movements to get his point across.

Due credit must be given to Kalyani Kalamandalam’s stage design and lighting specialist, Santanu Das, for making superb use of the proscenium — each of the three stories switches from one area to the other, each with a varied set of props, differentiated only by lighting. This helps bring out the universality of abuse against women and external control over their lives. Many more such enactments and such stories are needed.