On 7 October 2023, as Hamas launched an attack on Israel, the cast of Toronto’s Why Not Theatre were preparing to perform their five-hour adaptation of the Mahabharata at London’s Barbican. Based on the world’s oldest surviving poem (which is told across roughly 100,000 verses and 2m words), the show tells the 4,000-year-old tale from India of two branches of a family dynasty, whose war over a kingdom destroys the world. It’s a tale of choices and their consequences, echoing across generations; tit-for-tat cycles of vengeance that rival Succession or Game of Thrones.
In Why Not Theatre’s hands, it’s also about the dreadful power of the stories and histories we tell about ourselves. In one of the play’s most striking moments, a young prince asks why, when different plants can coexist in harmony, he and his siblings are unable to live side by side with their cousins. “When the truth cannot be agreed upon, war is inevitable,” his grandfather replies.
