Biplab Bandyopadhya’s “Caligula” opens with a soft, slow dance. Rome’s emperor Caligula moves with his sister and lover Drusilla, the haunting music wrapping them in their own universe. Though there are others on stage, Caligula and Drusilla seem almost isolated, alone. It would be beautiful, if each movement wasn’t punctuated with a kind of menacing note which speaks of something darker than a simple dance.
Translated by Ratan Kumar Das and directed by Bandyopadhyay, “Caligula” was performed by the Kolkata-based Prachyo theatre group for the 17th Bharat Rang Mahotsav. Originally written by Albert Camus, “Caligula” is an already famous play, its protagonist established as one consumed by a kind of twisted self aggrandisement and pride. This Bengali adaptation of the play retains the darkness beautifully, introducing it through several devices – misshapen masked men, a sort of dim, dark lighting that plays with shadows and induces a kind of ominous ambience, and finally, Caligula himself.
Goutam Haldar, who plays Caligula, is almost uncomfortable to watch. There is a kind of grotesque larger than life quality to him that is both convincing and disturbing. When the play opens, he’s sunk in despair and denial, unable to come to terms with Drusilla’s death. He often hallucinates her and visiting her grave, but his despair magnifies his personality instead of diminishing it. He walks through the play leaving behind a trail of torture, rape, violence and death. His twisted mind plays cruel games with his high ranking patricians and his wife Casunia, essayed well by Poulami Chattopadhyay. With every scene, Caligula becomes more and more fantastically monstrous, and impossible to take your eyes off of.
In his play, Camus raises questions about the human condition, and the ultimate end of human existence. Bandyopadhya’s version dwells on these questions too, and each character fights their own battle. The play becomes a series of vignettes, windows through which you get glimpses of the path Caligula has chosen for himself. Even in his madness, he almost displays method. He unleashes pain and suffering in an almost systematic manner; when he’s asked to treat the treasury with importance, he orders all subjects to sign over their property to the state. The wives of his patricians have to sit in brothels, and he murders his own men and their fathers. He makes enemies and knows that he is doing so. There is a kind of self-destructive quality to his actions, and Caligula knows that he has chosen the wrong path, one that provides no answers. He wonders, through long monologues and debates, the meaning of life, and the inevitable incompleteness of man and his death. His frustration and blood thirstiness grows, unleashing further terror. As the play progresses, its end, as well the end Caligula has chosen for himself through his actions, become clear.
Bandyopadhya’s Caligula is an intense play. It’s emotional and fraught with tension. The darkness, at times, almost consumes the play. While Haldar mostly does justice to his character, there are points where he also over-dramatises, and from a real flesh and blood person, transforms Caligula into his own caricature. It is then that the play becomes too much of what it is – too dark, too dramatic, and too intense. Already a complicated play, it also holds the danger of lapsing into a kind of unnatural and over-dramatic zone, which Bandyopadhya’s version sometimes does. At places, the actions seem too deliberate and rehearsed, and the easy, fluid acting is replaced by a kind of concentrated effort which jars, and cuts short the spell the play otherwise casts.
