It was fascinating to see Peter Brook being interviewed by Richard Eyre just before the sole British showing of his production of Tierno Bokar. Resisting Eyre's claim that he was an "auteur", embracing the diversity of theatre and turning questions back on his interviewer, Brook seemed to embody the necessary tolerance that is the subject of this strangely haunting, unexpectedly topical show.
Tierno Bokar is very much late Brook: quiet, meditative, elegiac. Set in the colonialist Mali of the 1930s, it is about the eponymous Sufi teacher who finds himself caught up in a bitter doctrinal dispute about a particular prayer: communities divide over whether it should be said 11 or 12 times. The governing French politically exploit Muslim factional differences. And when Bokar endorses a fellow Sufi leader, who practises the opposing form of prayer, he is ostracised by his own villagers and left to die virtually alone.
For all the clarity of Marie-Helene Estienne's text, it is difficult for a secular spectator to understand how a form of prayer can breed such hatred. But it is impossible not to relate the play to modern Iraq, in that it shows an interventionist western power brutally profiting from local religious schism. The piece is also wise, humorous and humane in its insistence that no one has a monopoly of wisdom. As Bokar tells a devoted acolyte, there is "my truth, your truth and the truth". Only through acknowledgement of difference will mankind survive.
As in all good theatre, content dictates form. But, even if Brook's production is devoid of virtuosic showmanship, it is still a model of aesthetic grace. Straw matting evokes the world of a Mali village. Philippe Vialatte's lighting bathes the stage in a honey-coloured glow. And Sotigui Kouyate conveys Bokar's spiritual tolerance through sheer economy of movement. One sequence, in which he mimetically sews together a bird's damaged wings, also acquires a distilled theatrical poetry through the added sound of a recorder.
Watching Brook's beautiful production, one is reminded how needlessly restless so much theatre is. Even the fretful impatience of colonialism is evoked through something as simple as Bruce Myers's French schools inspector flapping one hand against another. For Brook the medium is the message; and this production's lambent quietude exquisitely embodies the plea for tolerance.
· Until June 26. Box office: 0247-652 4524.
