The Strugglers staged 'Men without shadows' on 25.3.2019 in Patna

A gory tale of hostile cohabitation

This play takes you to such a world where lives of people worth being subject to different methods of torture. Darkness, cries, fear and hopelessness pervades all around the story the whole while. The beauty of this otherwise ugliest ghastly episode of behaviour is that even the torturer is well aware of the fact that he will meet the same destiny one day or the other. 

A group of five people of some terrorist organisation are captured by some dubious intelligence authority of a  hostile group. All the five including a woman are subjected to extreme physical sufferings  like removing their nails, pushing a stick between their bodies and even placing a flaming brazier below the thighs for long duration. The purpose is to extract the location of their capatain. But all of them bear the unbearable sufferings and do not reveal the secret. At one point they kill their youngest partner themselves so that he may escape from the torture of the enemies.

As the play is monotonously filled with a loathsome scene of dimly enclosure, it was incumbent upon the play-designer to take exterior supports of different kind like vocal and instrumental music, sound and light effects etc so as to make  the engagement of the audience more worthwhile and engrossing. 

The script of Jean-Paul Sartre has been well translated by J. N. Kaushal. Rajnish Kumar's direction was remarkable in the sense that he succeeded in giving a feel of a Nazi concentration camp. Shivam Kr, Anjali Sharma, Mrityunjay Pd, Rohit Kr, Ramesh Kr Raghu, Raushan Kr, Sameer Kr, Rajnish Kr, Saurabh Sagar, Rana Jitendra, Manish Bhagat and Sunny Raj were the actors and presented exemplary example of realistic acting. The actors performing the characters of Lucy, her other four group members and two tormentor were able to leave memorable impression to the psyche of the audience. Back stage artists including the stage design by Satya Prakash and Light by Rahul Kr & Raushan Kr were up to the mark. Make-up by Vinay Raj was nice.

The director and the whole team deserve appreciation for selection of horrific though realistic piece of drama and serving it's true taste to the viewers who must not have watched such a horrific play since long. 

Review by - Hemant Das 'Him' and Sanjay kumar

Photograps - Deepak Dutta

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