The drama "Kalighat" is the centerpiece for the month-long "Mela: A South Asian Festival" now at Baruch College. With its large cast sprawling across the broad Baruch stage, it is an impressive attempt to bring the Calcutta hospital scene to life. Though the piece fails in many respects, its earnest goals are laudable.
Writer-director Paul Knox focuses on Mother Teresa's home for the dying, featuring a heady mix of nuns, young idealistic volunteers, and very sick patients -- people of many races, nations, and faiths. Knox's spiritual message is that we are all one global community, and to underscore that message, John Donne's "No Man Is an Iland" is quoted in the program notes.
With many agendas and goals playing out among the volunteers, even as they devote themselves to the patients, the play has numerous intriguing subplots and well-drawn character sketches. There is a strong emphasis on homosexuality, but other types also surface: the dedicated hospital administrator; the bustling, overbearing nun; the novice who questions her calling. And among the volunteers: the gay man who had deserted his lover, the religious fanatic who denies his homosexuality, the English nurse who escapes into a hedonistic nightlife, the German psychologist who despairs of the entire scene. Knox's volunteers are English, Irish, American, German, Canadian -- very pat, obvious choices that weaken the play. Yet Knox should know, since he himself was once a volunteer at Kalighat.
Knox is given to long, tiresome monologues toward the play's end, hammering home his ideas. Considerable pruning would help, particularly as the closing nears. And the production itself feels amateurish, with makeshift curtains, lack of programs (given out only after the play), and unassigned audience seating. Moreover, the stage set, admirable for its simplicity, never captures the real grittiness of such a scene.
Yet the scenes are moving, performances are strong, and the piece is certainly thought provoking.