Abanti Chakraborty's play, written and directed by her, Siraj Ebong, unlike the usual texts and plays on the Bengal nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulah, talks more about the roles of a few people in Siraj's life, especially his wife Luftannisa, mother Amina Begum, aunt Ghaseti Begum, soothsayer and Murshid Quli Khan's daughter Azimunnisa and Mir Zafar. In this drama, politics becomes just a symbol...it is the interpersonal relationships which are under the radar, with hunger for power at the centre of the play.
The play starts off with Shaheb Bhattacherjee as Siraj-Ud-Daulah, with the women characters getting revealed a little later. Arpita Ganguly as Amina Begum and Senjuti Mukherjee as Ghaseti Begum took up the play on their own shoulders, especially Senjuti. She just becomes Ghaseti with all her heart and soul. Even when she is fighting with her everything to win her strength and power back, the shrieks of disappointment when she gets cheated by Mir Zafar, strikes you like a double-edged sword. Whether you feel happy or sad, you will never know.
Biplab Bandopadhyay, a seasoned actor, as Mir Zafar is a really great casting who portrayed the character with elan. The anger, the restlessness, the madness of losing the throne, kept changing as the story flowed.
Debalina Bhattacharya as Azimunnisa will instantly remind you of the three witches of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. With a similar kind of a powerplay, headstrong women characters, and witches seeing future, Azimunnisa, who allegedly ate human hearts, keeps coming back as a horific dream. In fact, the way play starts with a Azimunnisa moving across the stage holding a long bone in hand, would surely remind you of he opening scene of Macbeth, the witches with their cauldrons.
Now, coming to the much-awaited chemistry between Chotey Nawab, and his beautiful wife Lutfa, played by Susmita Dey, was definitely a high point in the play, pure cinematic moment. The characters seemed to be so much in love, that in fact, we felt that Shaheb was the best in scenes with Susmita. Susmita is honestly quite a surprise package. Not for once did she make us feel that she is a first-timer on stage, just on her second show. She was rightly strong, rightly innocent. And, we are sure not many would know that she has a beautiful, beautiful voice.
Coming to Shaheb, we felt he could be a little more controlled at the beginning of the play, where there are recurring parallels to Macbeth. When Siraj hears footsteps (remember Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost), we felt he was getting a little too overwhelmed with his emotions, making it look unnecessarily dramatic. Shaheb takes a little while to settle in but pulls off the show very smartly.
Siraj Ebong has its third show on April 10 at Gyan Manch.
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