The stage was set. theater enthusiasts thronged the Dhaka University Natmondal at 6.30 that evening to watch Doris Lessing’s A Play with the Tiger . Translated by Abdus Salim and directed by Ziaul Haq Titas, the play reveals the plight of a modern woman who makes a desperate attempt to save her social dignity as well as her love.
On the 10th of January I went to Dhaka University to enjoy the Drama & Theatre Department production still reminiscing their last production, Harold Pinter’s Homecoming. The stage-craft and the uncanny knack that were displayed by the artists performing Pinter's work had won my heart.
For me it was déjà vu all the way as the stage provided a good rekindling of my enjoying Homecoming on a winter night in late 2009.
The plot of the play, the brochure said, revolves around the character Anna Freeman, an Australian author living in England. As the plot unfolds it becomes clear that Anna is romantically involved with Dave Miller. However, the other characters – Harry Paine, Mary Jackson, Tom Latimer-make it clear that the world of A Play with the Tiger is not simplistic at all. Human emotions and passions run riot in the play.
The work explores the problems of sexuality with greater sensibility. Sexual desires and the agonies of repressed desires and memories haunt the characters. Dave Miller’s womanizing tendencies hardly seems to bring him any mental peace. He visits psychoanalysts for help. Anna also fails to find mental peace. The relationship with Dave, however, is sexually satisfying for her (“You’re brazenly hot in bed”, she declares to Dave).
Lessing, I felt, is critical of the psychoanalysts in the play. Dave Miller encounters the four “selves” of the psychoanalyst who treats him. Dave’s association with Communism and the repression of Communist politics in the West also come to fore in this scene.
The Nattokola students were brilliant in pulling off the scene.
As the play came to an end it was time to head back home. I remembered the emotions that I felt having watched Pinter’s play. But this time it was different. I headed for home. As I started walking briskly towards Nilkhet, a chilling cold gripped my bones.
It was quite cold indeed.
The fond memory of the Natmondol stage (a setting that I love) continued to linger in my mind though the production itself seems to have been fading except for Dave Miller’s repeated addresses of Anna as Babé, something that amused the audience a lot.
