Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead, Complicite theatre company at the Lowry, Review
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Tue 25 Apr 2023 - Sat 29 Apr 2023
I am embarrassed to say that I did not know of the novel on which Complicité theatre company’s new play is based.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, first published in 2009, is by Olga Tokarczuk - 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The drama, directed by directed by Simon McBurney, opened as if we were at a comedy club. Kathryn Hunter, who played the narrator Janina Duszejko, walked up to the microphone and said she was going to tell us a story.
What followed was essentially a one-woman show which lasted three hours, with an interval. More precisely it was a one-woman show where reality was filtered through what Janina’s revealed to us of herself and those she encountered in Poland's Klodzko Valley.
It was brought to theatrical life by an ensemble of supporting actors and a cinematically-shifting mix of sound, lighting, music and a screen showing videos, photography and rural landscapes.
Kathryn Hunter and Complicite ensemble. Photo by Marc Brenner.
The actors were brilliantly choreographed and able to depict multiple animals and people including schoolchildren, police officers and the hunters – who Janina loathed as much as she loved the poetry of William Blake.
I particularly enjoyed César Sarachu’s awkward portrayal of Janina’s neighbour who she called Oddball. It was an ironic nickname, coming from a character who created astrological charts based on the birthdays of those she interacted with and told them the date on which they were going to die.
The novel and play raised the question of whether those who find it hard to fit into society are drawn to remote locations or whether the paucity of human interaction means that they don’t bother hiding their eccentricities.
Sudden bursts of incandescent lighting, the bangs of guns, knocks on doors, amongst other loud noises, achieved the aim of unsettling the audience. The sound design by Christopher Shutt was underpinned by howling-mountain wind but also featured the atmospheric drone of atonal music and enchanting folk-infused string playing.
Kathryn Hunter. Photo by Marc Brenner.
Despite the bombardment of theatrical effects, it was the power of the writing and its unreliable, not entirely sympathetic, narrator which was at the core of the evening. Kathryn Hunter could have held our attention on the strength of the story alone, although in more of a fireside setting than the Lowry’s Lyric Theatre’s 1,730 seats, few of which were empty on the night I attended.
Towards the end of play, I felt that the cinematic effects could have been toned right down to draw out the stark denouement of the story.
Olga Tokarczuk asked us how far someone who cares deeply for non-human animals can justify their treatment of human animals, however mercenary and brutal their actions towards the natural world might have been. It is a credit to the author and Complicité theatre company that this dark territory was explored in depth without giving us glib answers to take away.
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead
The Lowry, Salford
Tuesday 25th to Saturday 29th April
Lowry website for more information
Lowry Pier 8, The Quays, Salford, M50 3AZ
Box Office: 0161 876 2000
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77143 - 2023-04-10 13:03:54