Bhen Antonin Stahly was nine years old, his mother took him to the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris to see a performance of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, which loosely translates as “the great story of mankind”. Over twenty actors from 16 countries performed on a stage saturated with red earth and marked by a water-filled moat; fire also played a major role. Directed by Peter Brook, whom RSC founder Peter Hall called “the greatest innovator of his generation”, and adapted by Luis Buñuel’s former co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière, this spectacular Mahabharata lasted nine hours plus intermissions. Even at this length, it represented a huge compression of the source text, which runs to 1.8 million words. Brook and Carrière’s version has been compared to a 40-minute summary of the Bible.
Audiences could watch the Mahabharata in three parts on consecutive evenings or as an all-day weekend marathon; at some outdoor venues, such as the Limestone Quarry in Avignon, where the production premiered in 1985, it began at dusk and reached its climax as the morning sun lit up the sky. Stahly saw it in a single sitting from noon to midnight. “It was like a superhero fantasy,” he says, still sounding awestruck. “There was Bhima, the strongest man in the world, and Bhishma, who has the power to live forever. Arjuna was the greatest warrior. And then there were all the gods. For me, it was amazing because I’m half-Indian, but I didn’t grow up in an Indian environment.”
During a break, Stahly met Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne. “I must have been the youngest there. They asked, ‘Do you like it?’ I told them, ‘Of course!’ So Peter said, ‘You can come back and see it anytime.’ At every performance, a cushion was reserved for me. After school, I took the metro to the theater.”
Then came a twist that usually only happens in movies. When the lead actor became ill, Stahly was asked to take on the role of the boy to whom the poet Vyasa tells the whole story. He stepped out of the audience and immersed himself in the fantasy, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo. “It felt very natural,” he says. “I kept listening to the story, but as an audience member and an actor at the same time.” So began an 18-month adventure during which he was taken out of school to take the show on tour as far afield as the United States, Japan and Australia.
Also in the cast was Hélène Patarot, who had failed her first audition but got a call from Brook after his first choice, Tilda Swinton, dropped out. Patarot’s professional stroke of luck became a personal one when she met fellow actor Ciarán Hinds, later the star of Belfast and There Will Be Blood; they are still married today. “Hélène was asked to keep an eye on me when I came to Paris,” says Hinds. “And then…” He gestures to his wife, who is sitting next to him. “But finding a partner was not a requirement!”
Rehearsals used everything from udu drums to archery. “We did a lot of fantastic preparation without actually using it,” says Patarot. Hinds adds, “It was about learning to surrender, to let things flow without forcing them.” After the world tour wrapped, Stahly, Hinds and Patarot reprised their roles in Brooks’ six-hour TV adaptation, shot in a studio near Paris. Footage from that was then adapted into a three-hour theatrical version, which will be shown in an 8K restoration at the Venice Film Festival 35 years after its premiere.
The restoration was made possible by Brook’s son, Simon, who fought for nearly five years to obtain more than 2,000 reels of celluloid. That meant navigating complicated rights issues and dealing with (and even suing) those who wouldn’t hand over the material without a fight or, according to Brook Jr., paying a huge ransom.
His father, who died in 2022, was kept in the dark about the obstacles. “He didn’t know how bad the situation was,” says Brook Jr. “There was no point stressing him out.” At one point, the film’s late producer’s entire back catalog was bought up by a third party, even though Brook Jr. had already acquired the rights to The Mahabharata. He says, “I said I wouldn’t allow them to show it, so they were stuck with a film they couldn’t show. They said, ‘We’ll just wait until you’re dead and then we’ll deal with your children.'”
Brook Jr. and the Mahabharata have known each other for a long time. “I was 13 or 14 when I first heard my parents and Jean-Claude talking about this thing that I could never pronounce properly. All I knew was that it was this great Indian story, bigger than the Iliad and the Odyssey, bigger than the Bible. I didn’t realize it was such a daring, entertaining adventure. It’s like Game of Thrones.”
Philosophical aspects have contributed to its longevity. “On the surface, it’s a classic story about good and evil. But as you go through it, you realise it’s not that simple. I think that moral complexity is what attracted my father. It’s a fascinating guide to how to live your life without really giving you any answers.”
A budding photographer, Brook Jr. was invited at 15 to document his father’s first two-month research trip to India with Carrière, Estienne and musician Toshi Tsuchitori. “The energy was extraordinary, but traveling around was quite exhausting. If you wanted to make a phone call, you had to book days in advance. And my father kept changing his mind: ‘Oh, let’s stay in this place for two more days…’ It was complicated.”
He saw the finished show for the first time at night in Avignon. “I’m a terrible theatergoer, so the prospect of sitting on a bench for nine hours was horrifying. But I was fascinated.” When he saw the film, however, he thought a fatal mistake had been made. It begins with Stahly winding his way backstage at a theater, through increasingly rugged and candlelit alcoves, and eventually encountering Vyasa (Robert Langdon Lloyd) sitting by a campfire. “I remember thinking, ‘Why is there a fire extinguisher on the wall? Why can we see the fuse box? Where was the continuity?'” Then he understood what his father was doing. Stahly explains, “You see it recently in the modern scene in The Zone of Interest. It’s a way of saying, ‘We’re entering this past world, but it’s all still here with us.'”
The rest of the filmed Mahabharata is relatively stripped down. “The challenge was to tell the story without slipping into a kind of decorative folklore,” says Chloé Obolensky, the production designer for the stage and film versions. Although the film is not as austere or sparse as, say, Lars von Trier’s Dogville (itself inspired by the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby), it still works visually through suggestion and evocation. “It invites us to create our own environment, whereas films usually just show it to you,” says Brook Jr. “It takes a bit of work. There are no elephants, for example.” Who needs elephants when Patarot gives birth to a giant iron ball that splits into 100 sons?
Although Stahly had been working on The Mahabharata since he was nine, he says he was not tired when filming began three years later. “But making a film is so different from making theater,” he says. “The dream bubble had kind of burst.” As a violinist and actor with his own theater company, he carries Brooks’ lessons with him to this day. “The most important thing he taught me was to listen and be present. That touched me so deeply. It lasted the whole time.” No regular theatergoer can escape memories of Brooks’ stagecraft. “When I see plays that use a firing line in the theater, I know it’s Peter’s. I know it’s a quote from his work.”
For Brook Jr., the relevance of the Mahabharata is still current. “I think every leader, every politician should read it. My father and I discussed it before he died. It is frighteningly prescient in terms of the destruction of the earth, brothers killing brothers, the earth rebelling. The Mahabharata speaks to our times – but it has done so for thousands of years.”
