You blink, and there it is right in front of your eyes: an elephant. Not a real elephant, of course, just a bunch of actors pretending to be an elephant. But you completely believe that it is an elephant. It costs nothing but is more effective than thousands of pounds' worth of special effects. It reminds you that the simplest theatre really can be magic. Shared Experience's adaptation of EM Forster's classic 1920s novel is full of moments that make sitting in the dark worthwhile.
Martin Sherman's clever adaptation cracks open the novel and teases out its themes. Adela Quested is visiting India chaperoned by the elderly Mrs Moore, whose magistrate son Adela may or may not marry. Confined largely to the company of English ex-pats, who both despise and fear the Indians, Adela longs to see "the real India" but finds it shockingly unsettling when she does. This is the relationship between two cultures and between a crumbling empire and an emerging nation played out through the stories of individuals.
The drama presents apparent opposites that turn out to be closely related: love and hate, friendship and enmity, heart and head, black and white, God and man, English repression and Indian sensuality. India is a place that changes you, "a beautiful muddle" that is conjured in an almost hallucinatory haze of burnished copper, music and rising white heat. Penny Layden's Adela is always peering into the distance as if she knows there is something there that she cannot quite see. Susan Engel's initially serene, ram-rod-backed Mrs Moore keeps looking at her son as if she no longer recognises him at all.
This is a big show that's also very simple. It has Shared Experience's hallmarks of passion and intelligence, and an ability to sweep you away on the narrative flow. Sherman provides both a comic edge and a philosophical and political framework. For the umpteenth time Shared Experience has proved that the journey from page to stage can be absolutely worthwhile.
· A Passage to India plays at the Oxford Playhouse this week. Box office: 01865 305305. Then tours to Warwick and Guildford.
