'Darkness' in the title points dually to night and to evil. As in many Greek tragedies there is a quality of darkness (a general lack of illumination); a dark spot on the landscape, evil emerges from this darkness. One crime leads to another, which eventually leads to a catastrophe. Until devastation can be perceived no more. This play is about ordinary individuals caught up in an extraordinary cycle of opportunistic self-loathing -- adultery, theft, murder, senseless violence, and infanticide.

The Power of Darkness is the tragedy of sordid misery and dense ignorance. It deals with a group of peasants steeped in poverty and utter ignorance.

To make Tolstoy's tragedy more contemporary to the urban audience of Bangladesh, in Paap-punya, the characters are not ordinary peasants but aristocrats.

Through the conversation between a stranger, a father and his offspring, Paappunya portrays a dark side of the society -- here everyone is greedy, hypocrite and fraud.

But, there are many flaws of the adaptation. If the target of the play is to satire the contemporary society, the names of the characters should have resembled Bangladeshi culture, as opposed to using European names such as David, Peter, Mary and Joseph.

Moreover, all of the actions take place in a Church, which is not credible.

Director Alak Ghose's approach is realistic. He has successfully created a few of the 'conflicts' successfully, but many sequences needed to develop.

Parvez Ahmed has created a realistic ambience of a 'Church' with the replica of the Holy Cross -- at the centre of the backstage.

M Manzur Haider Chowdhury's light design -- intensity, use of symbolism and others -- need to develop.

Performance of the actors with exception of Nazma Khatun and Abdul Hadi were declamatory. They need to develop acting skills.

Nandikar staged Paappunya at the Experimental Theatre Stage on September 15 as part of the programme of staging theatre performances of the troupes from outside Dhaka.