‘The Mahabharata’ Gets a Mixed Reception in N.Y.

“The Mahabharata” has arrived in New York, to mixed reviews.

Marilyn Stasio of the New York Post was hugely impressed with Peter Brook’s 11-hour retelling of the Indian epic, which Brook’s company is playing at the Majestic, an old Brooklyn movie house, under the auspices of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

“Even for nonbelievers,” Stasio wrote, “the spectacle is a magical experience. In the end as it was in the beginning, the ageless tale is immortalized in the one central image of a storyteller setting it all down in his big book.”

Frank Rich of the New York Times had problems, starting with the “punishingly hard benches” at the Majestic. He also mentioned Brook’s “prosaic, sometimes unidiomatic English” text; the “highly variable quality” of the acting, and the “relentless” Eastern music, which “sounds as if it were purchased by the yard, along with the rug.”

Rich suggested that Brook’s staging presented a synthetic “smorgasbord of Oriental stage craft.” At the same time, “one can’t help wondering if the idiosyncratically Eastern character of ‘The Mahabharata’ has been watered down. . . . “

In short: “One applauds the most magical pieces of the tapestry while recognizing that the disappointing whole is too heavy to fly.”

Howard Kissell of the New York Daily News found the evening “full of visual splendors and arresting music,” but noted that Brook’s troupe is “a multiracial group whose English is sometimes hard to grasp.

“They convey their characters with great power and energy, but they are not characters with whom we have much emotional affinity. Their saga impresses the mind and the eye, but seldom the heart.”

Alan Wallach of Newsday found the first two sections gripping but the last one “problematic.” In general, “the play and the staging combined remarkably to convey the elemental passions that compel brother to strike down brother.”

Reviews aside, “The Mahabharata” is almost sold out for its three-month Brooklyn run.

IN QUOTES. British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, in Houston for the U.S. premiere of his new comedy, “Henceforward . . . “: “My view of life is that of someone crouching behind a sofa. If there’s only one person outside, I’ll come out. But if there are two, I’d prefer to stay down.”