Peter Brook revisits Mahabharata epic at Young Vic

Battlefield deals with just one part of the epic poem

Stage director Peter Brook is revisiting The Mahabharata, his nine-hour epic stage production from 1985, as part of the Young Vic's new season.

The new play Battlefield, will focus on one section of the epic, dealing with the aftermath of a military conflict.

It will premiere in Paris on 15 September before coming to the Young Vic in February.

The theatre's new season will also host a stage adaptation of Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.

The play was a critical success when it made its debut in Ireland last year and is due to be performed at this year's Edinburgh Festival.

It will will have its London premiere on 17 February.

Brook's Mahabharata premiered at the Avignon festival in France in 1985.

The Indian text tells the story of the mythological Kurukshetra War. It is the longest known epic poem in existence, coming in at around 1.8 million words, roughly 10 times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.

The 1980s theatre version was nine-hours long (including breaks) and toured the world for four years

The Young Vic's artistic director David Lan said: "Peter Brook's staging of The Mahabharata is acknowledged as one of the seminal theatre works of the 20th Century.

"Now, in Battlefield, he and his longtime collaborators Marie-Helene Estienne and Jean-Claude Carriere explore the contemporary immediacy of just one of its many stories: The moment when the heroes of the epic face each other before a great battle."