A slice of The Mahabharata

THEATRE titan Peter Brook's Mahabharata was an epic nine-hour production which toured the world from 1985 to 1989, after which it was made into a film. Not surprisingly, it has gone down as one of 20th century theatre history's most memorable productions.

It is impossible for the original Mahabharata to be staged again in its entirety, said Brook's collaborator since 1974, Marie-Helene Estienne, but the duo have teamed up once more with playwright Jean-Claude Carriere to stage the last chapter of the 3,000 year-old text as a stand-alone play.

Estienne said in an e-mail interview that The Mahabharata, a book about the great war of extermination, is chillingly prescient for its time: "Look at the state of the world we're now in - this is really the age of darkness, Kali Yuga, as the Hindu scriptures call it."