Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead... "a thought-provoking piece, wry and otherworldly" @BarbicanCentre @Complicite @simonmcburney

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see the Complicité theatre adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk's quirky, eccentric, and wildly popular eco-thriller novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead at the Barbican Theatre in London's glitzy Barbican Centre.

 

Set in a area that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany, the play focusses on an unreliable narrator Janina who tells us the story of locals who are dying one by one and her own struggle for animal welfare. Post-modern in style, Janina addresses the audience directly to gain our sympathy and trust.

 

Directed by Simon McBurney the play uses light and dark as its themes; the plot, characters, shadows, masks, music, sound effects, and back projection are all shady (in every sense).

 

The affect is for you to judge. Good or bad. It's a thought-provoking piece, wry and otherworldly. Swirling around the central murder mystery is also a tale about the cosmos, astrology, the poetry of William Blake, and the possibilities (and limitations) of activism.

 

Fun but, at three hours, perhaps a little too long.