Uneasy passage to epic India

Adapting a novel for the stage is a risky business. Whole plotlines and characters need to be sacrificed on the twin altars of clarity and running time, especially when a book teems with detail as does the 1995 Booker-shortlisted work from Rohinton Mistry. Unfortunately, this theatrical take on 1975 India achieves no sort of balance, fine or otherwise.

British Asian theatre company Tamasha decided to tackle Mistry's epic by having the company of eight multi-part-playing actors work on Sudha Bhuchar's draft script. The perils of such an imprecise process are laid bare, as redundant scenes and excess toing and fro-ing have unwisely made it onstage.

It takes a disproportionate amount of time for any semblance of a coherent narrative to form in Kristine Landon-Smith's laborious production. Getting a handle on the involved story - as well as some strong accents - is further hampered by a barrage of distracting background noises. A director should never underestimate the benefit of an audience actually being able to hear the words.

Eventually, four main characters emerge from the confusion. Young widow Dina Dalal struggles to maintain financial independence from an overbearing brother by running a tiny dress-making concern from her rented f lat. Omprakash and Ishvar are the tailors she employs and meagre income is supplemented by young student lodger Maneck.

The first part of Mistry's novel concerns the tailors fleeing their outcast caste status in their home village, but this episode is here reduced to a bafflingly brief few words. What does reach us clearly, however, is the sense of terror created by the punitive State of Emergency sanctioned by Indira Gandhi's Congress Party.

Just when our unlikely foursome have established an idiosyncratic modus operandi, along come slum clearances and enforced sterilisation programmes to put already precarious lives into even greater jeopardy.

Designer Sue Mayes cleverly lets an enormous portrait of Prime Minister Gandhi herself provide a backdrop, and in half-light it looks positively sinister. Under Gandhi's penetrating gaze, Bhuchar compensates for the script with a standout turn as Dina. Despite her straitened circumstances, this proud woman movingly softens to the plight of those who don't even have any rent arrears to call their own.

Yet even this improvement could not help A Fine Balance regain its equilibrium.

Until 28 January. Information: 020 7722 9301.

A Fine Balance