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In a down-at-heel, white-brick building in Clapham, South London, the season's most ambitious theatrical project is nearing completion in absolute secrecy. No outsider is allowed into the rehearsal rooms of the Royal Shakespeare Company as the famous theater troupe goes through the final test runs of Midnight's Children, adapted by Salman Rushdie from his beloved, groundbreaking 1981 novel. Those involved will only be interviewed in a room high in the building, away from where the show is taking shape. What's happening down there? "We're experimenting, playing games, finding a theatrical language for the play," says its director Tim Supple.

Despite all the hush-hush, there's been no shortage of advance buzz over the play, which opens in London's Barbican Theatre on Jan. 29. Its provenance alone guarantees the highest expectations: Rushdie's 1981 novel is a modern classic found on literature syllabi in universities around the world. The project's other obvious talking point is its seeming implausibility: ever since the project was announced last September, fans of the book have wondered how Rushdie's sweeping, sprawling saga could possibly be squeezed into the confines of the stage.

That question has exercised the author himself. "It's got a lot of action in it," Rushdie says of his book, "almost too much. The main problem was how to condense it to three hours. To tell it complete, we'd really need about 15!" The book spans three generations and includes hundreds of characters. The hero, Saleem Sinai, narrates the connected stories of himself and his family and, along the way, the turbulent political history of India between 1915 and 1979.

Rushdie had originally written a five-hour screenplay for a bbc mini-series. But his own personal story intruded. In 1989, Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him after declaring his book The Satanic Verses disrespectful to the Koran. The author was forced into hiding for nine years, and the mini-series was doomed. The Indian government deemed it too risky to be filmed in Bombay; Sri Lanka gave permission, then changed its mind. The project lay dormant until Rushdie was approached by the RSC. They'd seen director Supple's 1998 production of another Rushdie work, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, at the Royal National Theatre, and were keen to bring the two men together again. Supple, who worked on the stage adaptation with Rushdie and Simon Reade, says they wrestled with the scale of the book: "We had to make it clear, vivid, exciting and simple enough to play onstage." In the end, they had to lose several important characters and memorable scenes — including one of co-adapter Reade's favorites, where Saleem visits Tibibi, the oldest whore in the world.

Supple is using a cast of 20, mostly of South Asian background. Zubin Varla, who plays Saleem, says many of the actors identify strongly with the story. His own family hailed from Bombay's tiny Zoroastrian community, and he grew up in Britain with a sense of cultural alienation similar to that of his character. "I spent my youth wondering who I was, just as Saleem does," Varla says. "Many people feel that." Rushdie admits to pride at seeing how much his book means to the mostly young cast — and relief at being able to focus on literature instead of fatwa. "It's very rewarding to see their commitment," he enthuses. "It's nice to be a writer talking about writing instead of that other shit!"

He approves, too, of Supple's grand staging. The director is throwing every theatrical device in the book at the show — intricate sound and lighting plots, rich costumes brought from India, even a cinema screen that can split into four to help depict the different narrative strands. The operating principle, says Rushdie, is excess. "Everything in this stage version should be excessive, sensual, tumultuous, colorful. That was my view of urban India in that period."

After a five-week run in London, the show will go to the U.S., first to Ann Arbor, Michigan, then New York, where Columbia University will present it at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater. Rushdie, who now lives in New York, loves the idea of his work being staged there. "For the RSC to go to Harlem is an important cultural event in itself, but there are resonances there with Midnight's Children. Race relations, the clash of cultures, questions of identity. And remember, America is also an ex-British colony."

Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, chose the Harlem venue and is equally rhapsodic about its suitability. "It's a natural place for this adventure. There's a vitality to Harlem that is alive and present; your senses overflow there with so many impressions. That's an obvious parallel with the India of this novel." (Bollinger is also a practical man, so audiences will be bussed to and from the Apollo.) The play will return to Britain in April for a national tour. For the RSC, it represents a much-needed opportunity to attract new audiences. The new artistic director, Michael Boyd, inherited a company €3.5 million in the red and with an unimpressive ratio of hit productions. Boyd sees Midnight's Children as exactly the sort of show to put the RSC back on track. It may not be Shakespeare, he says, but "Rushdie is in the highly theatrical Shakespearean tradition. You can say they're both overblown, or you can see that they supersede the prosaic limitations of naturalism. That's the sort of new work we should be doing." Boyd plans to introduce a regular summer festival of new work to run alongside productions of Shakespeare. "And we're looking for modern classics exactly like Midnight's Children. If Salman Rushdie wants to return, I'd bite his arm off!"

The author might be tempted. Although he has plans for another novel next, Rushdie says he's enjoying the rehearsal process so much, he may write an original play sometime in the future. And, if new discussions for a movie of Midnight's Children bear fruit — Rushdie says one Hollywood studio is sending people to see a preview of the play in London and another is reading the script — he might even resurrect his long-dormant acting ambitions: "I shall insist on a role!"

In the meantime, he's looking forward to the opening at the Barbican. "I love the new possibilities that an audience will bring to the work," he says. "Midnight's Children has been read by lots of people individually, but it's never been read collectively before. I'm fascinated to see how they react."

• JAMES INVERNE
• Salman Rushdie's acclaimed novel Midnight's Children finally makes it to the stage