April 5 - 7, 2017
at MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave
A World’s Stage Production
from France
based on the Mahabharata and
the play by Jean-Claude Carrière
adapted and directed by Peter Brook
and Marie-Hélène Estienne
“
Peter Brook's return to The Mahabharata is breathtaking—a dazzling piece of theatre.”
“ An hour of magic realism...it has a gentle power that lingers.”
“ Luminous and potent”
“An elegiac play of stark and uncommon beauty…Battlefield is steeped in the echoing silence that follows the end of a world when no one knows quite where to go from here. You may be heartened to hear that the mystery of life—so brief, so cruel and so infinitely cherishable—is explained. Well, not to you. It’s a secret that is shared on the stage. But somehow the rapt silence that follows this unheard revelation is deeply, warmly comforting.”
“There's a distinct aesthetic harmony to Peter Brook's production that feels not only refreshing in the context of current West End fare, but also allows for a mostly clear understanding of this important and timely production. The staging is enchantingly simple, yet continually surprising.”
“It has the beguiling, heady quality of a voyage into the unknown...Something profound is felt on the pulse here; I cannot quite say what. If this does prove to be Brook's swansong, his Prospero moment, know that he achieves rare magic, and with the slenderest art.”
“Combines the immediacy of story-telling with the purity of Greek tragedy”
“This is a play to make one think within a greater context of contemporary issues, the important part we all have in checking accountability, of our responsibilities to others, and the cyclicality of life, the importance of not giving up.”
“The play feels very contemporary…There is laughter, as well as wonder.”
“ The glory of this production, little more than an hour long, is its stunning simplicity. This meditation on the sorrow and pity of war, eloquent and moving in its extraordinary simplicity, is sadly both timely and timeless. Stories are folded within stories, and amidst that sorrow and pity there are plenty of flashes of humour, albeit dark or rueful.The storytelling of Brook and Estienne accrues power even as they continue to strip it bare to the bone.”
