Epic drama

Scarcely has the Playhouse seen off Peter Flannery's phalanx of characters in Our Friends in The North than its stage prepares to take on the Shared Experience company of 15 actors portraying no fewer than 72 roles. It's only a touring adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, though, and there will be but two battles - little skirmishes like Austerlitz and Borodino! Is there no limit to the epic visions for stage drama?

Helen Edmundson obviously thinks not: she had already adapted The Mill on the Floss and another Russian epic, Anna Karenina, by 1995, when she went to Richard Eyre at the National Theatre with an idea: "He wanted me and Shared Experience to come and do a co-production. I put War and Peace on the list at the last moment - rather flippantly, really - thinking Richard would never go for it. But he did. I then had to re-read the novel rather hastily (not easy) to be sure that it was actually possible to adapt."

Helen, who lives in West London with her husband and two pre-teenage children, started out as a cabaret performer and occasional actress, but writing songs and comic sketches can have been no preparation whatsoever for the technique she honed for dealing with such formidable projects as War and Peace.

She agreed: "Once I've decided on a project, I then have to decide what the central theme will be. This doesn't have to be the only theme - it can be like a tree trunk, from which branches can grow and be explored."

She went to Russia with the company designer, visited the site of Borodino and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, made notes on every chapter of the vast book, and eventually decided what path to follow.

"I concentrated on the idea of will - how much should one person try to exercise their will? At one extreme, Napoleon, who wants the whole world to be his subject - then Princess Maria and Platon Karataev, who feel that we shouldn't try and impose our will at all, but subject ourselves to that of God. And Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei, who simply try and work out where they stand in relation to all this."

Thirteen years on from her adaptation's first staging, it is delightful to find that Helen's enthusiasm for the project is undimmed. When I asked her rather blandly whether she though Tolstoy was a good creator of characters, she shot back on the instant: "Brilliant, both male and female. All of them defy expectation. It's almost impossible to pick out any of them specifically, but Old Prince Bolkonsky is fabulous - difficult, tyrannical, eccentric, intelligent, and yet loving and vulnerable."

Tolstoy, she adds, rarely tries to soften blows or create a character who will win sympathy.

This revival is a co-production between Shared Experience, the Nottingham Playhouse and Hampstead Theatre. Its co-directors, Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale, are joint artistic directors of Shared Experience, with both of whom Helen Edmundson has previously worked - "We are sure of our shared aesthetic and I know the challenges that they will like to respond to."

She is especially pleased to have pulled off an original ambition - that her adaptation should be staged in two parts. For the 1996 original production, the National Theatre called for a four-hour evening performance, with two intervals, due to programming and budgetary reasons (for what it is worth, Helen also told me that at the time she was pregnant with her first baby and had to work extra fast' to be sure that any form of script was ready in time for serious rehearsals).

Now, though, the endeavour has indeed become a full two-parter: for the Playhouse, this means that Part One will be seen on the Thursday evening, with Part Two on Friday. Then, if they so choose, playgoers can pay a total of £40 to see both parts on the Saturday or Sunday (meal breaks provided, but no food courtesy of the theatre!). This would seem a fine deal, based on the ticket prices for each separate outing.

This tour of a monumental work comes to Oxford already garlanded with roseate reviews, and Helen is in no doubt as to the enduring truths that she has extracted, but which are Tolstoy's originals.

"War and Peace is phenomenal in the way that it grapples with what it actually means to live - to be a human being in this world, with a limited amount of time and understanding. I know of no other book which does this so fairly and comprehensively."

Currently, Helen Edmundson must have enjoyed a period of relative relaxation: after dealing with such a vast Tolstoyan canvas, how pleasant it must be for her to tap gently away at the Hardy of The Mayor of Casterbridge for BBC Radio 4 (arriving soon to the airwaves) and the Arthur Ransome classic Swallows and Amazons for the National Theatre? But then again, on what epic scale will that lake be?

War and Peace is at the Oxford Playhouse from Thursday until Sunday, March 30. For tickets call the box office on 01865 305305.