Lyric Artistic Director David Farr joins forces with leading light of the Asian music scene, Shri, movement director Amit Lahav and long-time collaborator Ti Green (Tamburlaine, Coriolanus) to create a highly physical and visual new adaptation of one of the greatest love stories of all time - The Ramayana, India's greatest epic story, first written six thousand years ago but still modern in theme.

A tale of love and loss, honour and revenge, it recounts the plight of lovers Rama and Sita as they find themselves exiled from their homeland and plunged into the deep forests of Southern India. When the rapacious southern ruler Ravana kidnaps Sita, Rama enlists a band of heroic monkeys to help him find her. Sita is forced to resist Ravana's approaches in the lavish palace of his native kingdom, Lanka. Ramayana is a story of love and suffering, told in a series of fantastical episodes populated by goddesses, demons and monkeys.

Farr's energetic, expansive and emotional retelling focuses in particular on the conflict between the spiritual and the material. Rama's city, Ayodhya is a place of the gods, religion and belief but also of suffering. In contrast, the thriving southern kingdom of Lanka is a place of business, growth and materialism. Its ruler Ravana defies the "cheap bread of religion" in favour of a growing wealth that he argues will favour all. Ramayana embraces a conflict at the heart of modern India and the world: the battle between god-given social and political structures and the new freewheeling secular liberalism.

Ramayana continues the Lyric's love for pulsating visual and multi-dimensional theatre. A cast of seven and a live musician hurl themselves into ensemble playing within Ti Green's design of a hundred vertical bamboo poles, evoking the stirring energy of the Indian forest. Composer Shri's musical career has previously included five years of touring with Nitin Sawhney. He is currently one half electronic trip hop duo Badmarsh and Shri. Co-founder of the critically acclaimed theatre company Gecko, Amit Lahav co-directed The Race, a winner at the Total Theatre Award 2005.

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