Shared Experience theatre company say that they're 'committed to creating theatre that goes beyond our daily lives'. They have certainly managed to achieve this in their production of A Passage to India, at the Playhouse until Saturday.

The novel, with numerous interwoven themes, has been distilled into an evening of absorbing theatre. In his adaptation, Martin Sherman has approached this complexity through Eastern spiritualism and philosophy, so that despite the bumbling Edwardian characters, the production is right up to date and ever-pertinent. The result is thought-provoking, both personally and culturally.

The production is surprisingly simple. A small cast of just eleven players keeps the action thoroughly focused, and director Nancy Meckler has incorporated live Indian music into the production to help set the scene. The two instrumentalists, Chandru and Sirishkumar, on violin and tabla respectively, bring a sense of immediacy to the action that also heightens the 'East meets West' tension.

Conflict between the snobbish English settlers and the resentful Indians is inevitable, given the approachable and familiar characters Sherman has created out of EM Forster's deeper, more complicated ones. Paul Bazely as Dr Aziz, in particular, manages to highlight the conflicts facing Indians obliged to interact with the English. Ian Gelder gives a compelling performance as Mr Fielder, vainly and earnestly attempting to draw the cultures together, while Priyanga Elan and Geoffrey Beevers provide glints of comedy as the Anglo-Indian jolly-hockey-sticks society types.

As the drama builds to its climax at the mysterious Marabar caves, the cultural differences between Ronny and Adela - the 'odd couple' brought together by the artificial Anglo-Indian lifestyle - suddenly don't seem so small after all, and it's not long before the cracks begin to show. Guy Lankester and Penny Layden manage to convey the mismatched couple painfully effectively, underlining all the paradoxes of English society and its transplantation to India.

It is Susan Engel as Mrs Moore, however, who really allows us to experience the revelations - the connection - that the characters themselves experience. And although the violence of the twentieth century is foretold, we're also given a timely reminder by Aaron Neil, as the marvellously vague interpreter of fortune Godbole, that life is not simply a muddle, but a mystery.

O. Rowland, 15.10.02