Invoking Ukio (sic) Mishima this year, Samik Bandyopadhyay, mentor of Happenings’ Rabindra Utsav, stated that “Happenings are the signals for endless reconstruction, reorganization.” Sadly, the festival’s showpieces did just that: reconstruct, reorganize. Can we not aspire to anything higher than such mundane methods for someone like Tagore? Must we deconstruct and reassemble slavishly in Western postmodernist fashion, treating Tagore like a Lego set? One longed for a director possessing what Stevie Wonder called innervision, rather than those with merely innovation.

Like every other artistic journeyman today, Sunil Shanbag needs to connect “disparate narratives” in Walking to the Sun (Arpana, Mumbai); Dakghar by itself cannot suffice. It does not take long for anyone to discover the touching production by the Polish doctor, Janusz Korczak, with his Jewish orphans in the Warsaw ghetto to prepare them for the death they must face in the hands of the Nazis. So Shanbag got Vivek Narayan to write a play beside a play — Korczak narrating in English on stage left and Dakghar enacted in Hindi on stage right — yet forgot to acknowledge their debt to Jill Parvin, the British director who first researched the 1942 production and created her own The Post Office within a play in 1993. Narayan’s script is different, but uses two of her distinctive techniques: Korczak crosses over to act the royal Kabiraj at the end, and the whole adult cast lapses into behaving like kids (picture). Surprisingly, he deletes Korczak’s amazing dream in which Tagore asked him to produce Post Office, and the lady teacher in the orphanage who actually directed it. Meanwhile, in order to incorporate Korczak, he cuts Tagore’s yogurt seller, the little boys and much dialogue. As for the acting, Korczak’s English accent is imperfect, but the rest express Dakghar poignantly. Barbed wire taut across high pillars gives the set (by Nayantara Kotian and Vivek Jadhav) a concentration-camp effect, but Moushumi Bhowmik’s music leaves us strangely dissatisfied.

Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry’s Punjabi interpretation of the short story Strir Patra (The Company, Chandigarh) explored some intriguing dimensions, for instance Mrinal reliving her lost girlhood through Bindu, and Bindu as a replacement for Mrinal’s dead baby daughter. Chowdhry continues her patented style of working with organic materials — earth, water, plants, fabric, colours — which impart a symbolic, if not ritualistic, quality to the drama, but we feel we have seen them all before. By that logic, why does Mrinal use an obtrusive mechanical typewriter for her letter instead of plain paper and pencil? Chowdhry also omits the tangible setting of the sea in Puri, important for the ambience of serenity in which Mrinal submerges herself and takes her final decision. Above all, one questions the necessity of splitting Mrinal’s role between a man and a woman; I do not believe that a male actor adds to her characterization in any way, though Ramanjit Kaur compensates with her genuine intensity.

Probably the most inspirational production, Tota Kahini, by the West Bengal Correctional Services, proved how drama therapy can transform the lives of prisoners and forced me to eat humble pie about police activities. Inspector-General Sharma claimed that our state boasts the only such programme of public performances in the world. Can it really be that what Bengal does today, India may do tomorrow? Pradip Bhattacharjee (from Berhampore) elongates his dramatization of the tiny tale, but Tuhin Kanti Dey directs the team, in ornate costumes and large masks designed by Bhattacharjee, into a cohesive unit for whom the parable of the parrot trapped and withering away in a cage obviously carries great personal significance. Aniruddha Singha composed catchy signature tunes to which the Raja (Sudarshan Bera) and his nephew (Tarit Kundu) dance intricate routines on every entry. The grandfather (Budhydeb Mete) sings powerfully.

Another novel local venture, Aguner Parashmani, by Doll’s Theatre, recounted Tagore’s patriotism through puppetry. Sudip Gupta presents some lesser-known facts, such as the British surveillance of Tagore for suspected subversive acts, as well as relevant extracts from his songs and works like Gora and Taser Desh. Gupta employs virtually every kind of puppet plus regular acting, but this cornucopia of sequences and idioms breaks up into too many brief episodes and quick changes, giving the impression of a big rush and of technical shortcomings. We could not relish each for its own sake, something for which we remember Doll’s Theatre’s masterpiece, Taming of the Wild. Gupta redeemed everything, however, when the strains of Jana gana mana unexpectedly wafted in at the close, and the audience immediately stood up in unison.