Battlefield

Thirty years after his legendary sunset-to-sunrise production of The Mahabharata consecrated the BAM Harvey stage, director Peter Brook returns with Battlefield, a breathtaking distillation of the central story in the ancient Sanskrit poem. In the wake of an apocalyptic civil war, a remorseful King Yudishtira—his hands still bloodied from the carnage—desperately seeks some just way to rule over murderers and murdered alike. Silk scarves become rivers and shrouds; four actors are reincarnated as worms and eagles, victims and perpetrators; and a single instrumentalist (a veteran of Brook’s original production) scores the bleak peace of oblivion, giving haunting new life to this staggering Indian epic.