Although we missed out on a Feluda release on celluloid this Christmas, the sleuth arrived with a bang in his proscenium avatar. Ankur — a relatively unknown and young theatre group — has come up with a smart stage adaptation of a relatively lesser-known Feluda story, Golapi Mukta Rahasya (1989).
For the record, Feluda’s stage career started with Apsara Theatre-er Mamla, which Charbak produced in 2007 with Arindam Ganguly as the director and Sabyasachi Chakraborty — the reel-life Feluda at that time — playing the private investigator. It received a rather lukewarm reception. A few years later, Sandip Bhattacharya directed Golokdham Rahasya with Suddho Banerjee as Feluda. This reviewer does not remember seeing any other Feluda adaptation in the meantime. Ankur’s Golapi Mukta Rahasya hits the bull’s eye at a time when the Bengali stage is preoccupied with scanning every possible literary resource for a subject worth staging.
Centred around a missing pink pearl, a rare gem by any standard, Golapi Mukta Rahasya has a rather thin plot. Feluda and his sidekicks, Topse and Jatayu, go to places like Varanasi, including the den of Maganlal Meghraj, the arch-rival, to retrieve the priceless gem. The story, set in the 1980s, also refers to princely states and their lavish lifestyles in a way typical of Satyajit Ray.
Directed by Subhadip Chakrabarti, Ankur’s production rides merrily on a breezy script that he wrote. Feluda’s drawing room is lifted straight out of the Ray films. The sound design keeps referring to Ray’s original score, placing Golapi Mukta Rahasya in the same league as its screen brethren. Special attention in crafting the scene-endings gels with the spirit of close-ups. The light designer, Kalyan Ghosh, makes optimum use of side-lights down-centrestage to heighten the mood. All this would have resulted to nothing without Shoumo Banerjee playing Feluda. An agile Banerjee — with his dapper stage presence and scintillating martial arts skill — holds the drama together. Jay Badlani is appropriately menacing as Maganlal Meghraj. Superb cameos by seasoned actors like Phalguni Chatterjee and Panchanan Banerjee lift the production further.
