It's probably a safe enough bet to say that Peter Brook is quite fond of the
Mahabharata; he staged the entirety of the Indian epic poem 30 years ago, but
that doesn't seem to have got it out of his system. Brook and regular collaborator
Marie-Hélène Estienne have returned to the story, although this time they mercifully
don't have a 9-hour theatrical endurance feat in mind:
Battlefield, from an
adaptation by Jean-Claude Carrière, deals only with one section of the epic. In fact
we very much enter in the middle of the story as the battle fought on the titular
field has just ended; whole armies have been wiped out, and all that's left is for a
couple of the mortally wounded to shuffle off the mortal coil, with a few parting
words of advice for the new king (Jared McNeill) before he takes his throne. Much of
this will take the form of fables and recollections.
