An adptation of Moliere's Le Tartuffe

A scene from the play Ohe Tanchak

In 1664, Moliere wrote his most controversial, and perhaps his greatest play, Le Tartuffe. A brilliant satire of religious hypocrisy, the play was less than enthusiastically received by the powerful clergy.

Over the years, many Bangladeshi theatre groups have presented Moliere's adapted plays on stage. However, in most cases, they have failed to maintain the essence of a witty approach to the 'Comedy of Morals' concept.

Ohe Tanchak, a current production of Theatre (Natok Sarani), is no exception to this observation.

The enthusiastic and bold performance of the actors is a very important element to make a 'Comedy of Morals' (dealing with social issues), interesting to the audience. And with exception of the performance of Rezaul Ikram in the role of Kutubul Alam Nizampuri, the 'religious hypocrite', none of the actors managed to put their heart into their performance. In his short appearance Ranjit Saha was impressive.

The story line of adaptor-director Momotazuddin Ahmed's play Ohe Tanchak is very simple: A con man by the name of Kutubul Alam Nizampuri pretends to be a holyman and deceives Abdul Quader Dhali and his family. During the adaptation Momotazuddin Ahmed has created a world minus a touch of reality of the contemporary social milieu of Bangladesh, except generalisations such as 'misuse of religion for political interest', 'rehabilitation of Pakistani collaborators' and others through the dialogue and soliloquy of the characters. However, Moliere's original play was banned twice because of its authentic presentation of reality through the comedy.

As the director of the play Momotazuddin Ahmed has repeated many 'directorial compositions' of his earlier hit production Shat Ghater Kanakori. The 'magic door' technique and symbolic colour effects have been used to avoid vulgar scenes. Popular Hindi film songs have been used as the playback.

Abdul Mannan's set is very simple -- just a few 'stools' on the right corner and a ladder on the left corner of the empty stage. Thandu Raihan's use of light settings and symbolic colour is very traditional and in most of the cases not up to the mark.

Theatre staged Ohe Tanchak at Mahila Samity Stage on April 28.