Passage to India

When film director David Lean fashioned a spectacular cinema epic from EM Forster's great 20th century novel, A Passage to India, he never realised the book dealt with what could not be literally seen: the workings of the concealed, interior life; whether religious, spiritual or sexual.

His movie was like a lovely but dim-witted blond(e). The triumph of Nancy Meckler's beautifully imagined Shared Experience production, in Martin Sherman's cleverly distilled adaptation, is that it does more than dramatise Forster's narrative about colonialism and a crisis of east-west relations. Meckler conveys Forster's essence.

The novel's black-white incident, dependent upon Adela Quested's claim she was sexually "insulted" by Dr Aziz in the Marabar caves, is shrouded in enigma. Miss Meckler accordingly conveys a sense of what's happening in Miss Quested's disturbed mind.

Her ingenious, expressionistic handling of this key scene, and indeed of the whole production, charges the evening with serious rather than flashy excitement. Designer Niki Turner's minimal set offers a silver and gold autumnal back-panel, with a long, low platform for parading colonials - all prejudice and pride. Yet a deep air of foreboding gathers.

Outside the caves, cicadas and echoes tap out a bulletin of anxiety. Inside, Peter Salem's sinister music resounds. The carvings that Penny Layden's memorably wan, plain Adela sees in the caves are represented by white-clad, recumbent actors, who in slow, sensuous movements stretch their limbs in her frightened, reeling direction. The place is heavy with the sound of people breathing in amplified unison as Adela staggers in a whirl of fear.

Miss Meckler's mistake is to allow black actors to play some of the ruling, racist Raj - and in caricature style. It's an alienating, self-conscious device. But the clashes of values, cultures and religions are powerfully, comically rendered.

Sherman locates and emphasises what Forster scarcely dared convey. The unconscious, doomed homoerotic attraction of Ian Gelder's liberal college principal Mr Fielding for Paul Bazely's mercurial, not very Indian, Dr Aziz is nudged into the open.

Guy Lankester's magistrate, Ronnie Heaslop, wonderful in twitching, restless irritation, regards Miss Layden's poignantly drab Adela as scant love-interest. Beyond the erotic realm, Aaron Neil's serene Hindu mystic Professor Godbole and Susan Engel, superb as Ronnie's initially humane and then withdrawn mother, emerge as examples of spiritual detachment in this enthrallingly transmitted account of Britain's Empire in decline.

Until 22 February. Box office: 020 8237 1111.

A Passage To India