Mahabharata

More than 20 years after the revered Peter Brook production, director Stuart Wood bravely takes on the task of recreating epic ancient Indian poem, the Mahabharata, for the stage. However, condensing the mammoth tale - of a family feud resulting in an apocalyptic war, written in more than 10 thousand stanzas - into a two hours and 40 minutes and still retaining the sense of this sprawling narrative was always going to be a tall order. This trick is attempted by focusing on Natasha Jayetileke's Princess Draupadi whose powerful performance outshines her co-stars but fails to carry the entire production.

Paradoxically, despite squeezing what is reputedly the longest book in the world into a couple of hours, there are moments which drag and speeches that are overlong. The show would have been better served by shorter, sharper pacing. The tension too between Western theatrical tradition and the original source material threatens at times to torpedo the whole undertaking. Nowhere was this culture clash more acutely felt than in Gauri Sharma Tripathi's Kathak-based choreography, which dilutes this traditional Indian dance form, and Nitin Sawhney's music, which soars when its influence is Indian and falls flat when Western, guilty of the more heinous cliches of West End musicals.

That said, the staging is wholly spectacular. Angela Davies' sets and costumes fill the stage with colour and texture. From the bright, soft cloths to the rough copper moon there is much here for the eye to enjoy. Set piece moments of real beauty such as the wrapping and lengthy unravelling of Draupadi in white silk manage to momentarily transcend what was at heart a flawed production. Despite these brief moments of rapture, this is a saggy telling of a wonderful tale.