Canadian company Why Not Theatre’s adaptation of the 3rd century BC Hindu narrative The Mahabharata is an absorbing, grand work, while deliberately presented in a manner which is not quite epic – in the sense of Romantic opera or Greek Classical tragedy.

This version, conceived by Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, condenses the over 90,000 rhyming couplets of the source text into a two full-length performances – Karma and Dharma – which may be seen with an intervening meal break accompanied by discussion of the story’s major themes and/or sub-narratives. In this Perth festival staging, the yellow dal served at intermission was very good.

The on-stage action adds up to approximately five hour – shorter than Peter Brook’s landmark three-part, nine-hour version, which toured Australia in 1988, before being shown on SBS television. I vividly recall seeing what, at that time, constituted a major televisual and theatrical event.

Miriam Fernandes and Jay Emmanuel in Mahabharata. Photo © Apurva Gupta

Jain and Fernandes’ interpretation demands the audience resonate with its lengthy, extruded rhythm and gradually soak up its elements. In musical terms, the production is closer to Phillip Glass’s Minimalism in which a...