THEATRE

`The Road to Mecca' is at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Upper Campfield Market, Deansgate, Manchester (0161-833 9833) 6-29 Mar

Their hands flew to their faces, their fingers clutched their cameos, there was a rush on smelling salts. When news broke that Fiona Shaw was to play Richard II for Deborah Warner, the most unlikely people had a fit of the vapours. According to theatrical gossip, one extremely distinguished member of the acting profession refused Warner's offer of John of Gaunt, suggesting Joan Hickson in his stead.

You'd think no one had ever cross-dressed before. Pardon me, but didn't boys play the women's roles in Shakespeare's day? Sarah Bernhardt had a fairly famous crack at Hamlet and in the late 1960s, Buzz Goodbody directed Frances de la Tour in the role. In the 1980s, Helen Schlesinger played the great Dane, but anyone unnerved by such "horrifying" notions will be relieved to learn that she's been playing it by the book since then.

Literally so. She was the sickly Mrs Smith, Anne Elliot's widowed friend in Roger Michell's magnificent TV adaptation of Persuasion, and before that, she was a sensuous, powerfully intelligent Maggie in Shared Experience's passionate adaptation of The Mill on the Floss. She brought an hypnotic intensity to Maria Bolkonsky in the Shared Experience/National Theatre War and Peace, her tall frame torn apart by self- sacrifice and religious zeal. Not everything about the production worked, but it was worth seeing for her piercing performance alone.

This week she opens in Athol Fugard's ludicrously neglected 1984 play, The Road to Mecca. "These days, you're often doing things for the sake of your career, which is all well and good, but it's a relief to do things for other reasons. This play completely gripped me." In case that sounds like actory gush, Schlesinger turned down a Shakespearean lead role to do it.

An elderly sculptress (the redoubtable Ann Mitchell) is forced to confront how she lives her life. Fugard's sensitive revelation of the secrets and lies, the passions and fears which underpin the motives of all three characters sets up an almost thriller-like plot, but its richness and complexity is profoundly moving. It's a play so quietly truthful that you feel the resonances echoing all about you. And in case you think that's critical gush, I admit that at the original National Theatre production, I was so moved, that I spent the last half hour in tears. The combination of that play and this cast is worth travelling miles to see.