Performance Review of The Caretaker: A Play directed by Arindam Mukherjee and Madhurima Goswami. Bengali translation by Anya Theater, Gyan Mancha, Kolkata, India. Staged June 2025

Sitting in a packed Gyan Mancha auditorium in Kolkata as Harold Pinter’s work made a comeback in Bengali theater, I was transported to a similar evening two decades ago when soon after his Nobel Prize–winning (2005) The Homecoming was staged at the same venue in English. There have been very few Pinter productions in Bengali theater. Directed by Arindam Mukherjee and Madhurima Goswami and produced by Anya Theater, Caretaker (the definite article dropped from the English title to make it sound colloquial in Bangla) breaks that 20-year silence. The production has a stellar cast with two of the finest contemporary Bengali theater and film actors—Anirban Chakrabarti and Debesh Roy Chowdhuri—essaying Aston (changed to Shankar) and Davies (changed to Adhir) and Tathagata Chowdhury playing Mick, in this version Shankar’s younger brother Tegra.