Agony of a widow and her ailing daughter has been featured in Good Night Ma staged on Tuesday at the Edward M Kennedy Center for Public Service and Arts (EMK Center) in Dhanmondi, Dhaka.
The play is an adaptation of Pulitzer winning play Night Mother by noted American playwright Marsha Norman. Adapted by Mita Chowdhury, the play depicts a divorced Shampa, who decides to commit suicide following chronic epilepsy and frustrations for becoming jobless. Her derailed vagabond son also adds more distress to her life.
Shampa’s aged widow mother tries to give her a little comfort and tries to restrain her from doing anything drastically impulsive.
Specialty of Wahida Mollick Jolly’s directorial composition remains in her skill to create some unique moments between the aged mother and Shampa.
Shormimala played the role of Shampa while the aged mother character was enacted by Mita Chowdhury.
The performances of both the actors were convincing to the audience. Even if the play has only two characters, the strong dialogues and credible performance kept the spectators engrossed.
The scene where an argument takes place between the two characters in which the mother tries to discourage her daughter from attempting suicide explaining the dark sides of the fatal act and the latter justifies why she should end her life touches one’s heart. The anguish of the daughter as well as the helplessness of the mother when the former makes a list of important phone numbers, medicines and several other things so that the latter does not face any difficulties after her daughter’s suicide were realistically portrayed.
The play had a simple and straightforward stage design with only drawings exhibiting a kitchen. However, the overall highly modern outlook of the kitchen had little resemblance to one typically found in an ordinary
middle class family of Bangladesh.
A large number of audiences enjoyed the play. ‘The best thing about the play is that the dialogues have been kept simple and were easily understandable,’ observed Simon Khandokar, a private service holder who watched the show.
The play was jointly organised by EMK Centre and Stage One Dhaka.
-With New Age input
