A Man for All Seasons

Today, I went to watch the Bdeshi take on A Man for All Seasons. It's a play about how one man stood up for what he believed in. I saw it not too long ago when Frank Langella (you know... the guy who played Nixon in Frost Nixon) was in it. It's a great play, but I wasn't overly optimistic when I stepped into the theater today mainly because I've seen great plays being butchered by directors who tried to stage them - unsuccessfully - in a culture and a setting different from the ones they were originally written in.

I was very surprised with what I saw today. Whoever played the Common Man is one hell of an actor. The guy playing Thomas More was pretty darn good too; he got the crowd cheering for him a couple of times.

The venue was the National Academy of Fine Arts, which is pretty close to where I live now. I live maybe a mile or so away from the Academy.

Most of the plays staged there are in Bengali, the local language, so if you aren't very comfortable with watching a play in a language you are not very fluent in, or if you are completely unfamiliar with a certain play, maybe this isn't the best option for you, but if you don't mind stepping out of your comfort zone every now and then, this theater could be a godsend. Anyway, in a previous blog post, I whined about how I am always bored in the evenings in Dhaka. Now, I think I've found something to keep me occupied for at least a couple of evenings every month.