★★★★½
The name alone has your head spinning with curiosity and perhaps slight trepidation of the journey you’re about to take. Now playing at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead conjures a visceral sense of imagery, and Eamon Flack’s adaptation more than lives up to it.
A wild blend of eerie mystery, whodunit, dark satire and existential thriller, this is a bold, triumphant theatrical undertaking. Alive with rich language and evocative imagery, this is thrilling theatre unlike anything I’ve seen on stage before.
Based on Olga Tokarczuk’s acclaimed novel, the story takes us into the world of Janina Duszejko (Pamela Rabe). Now a seemingly mad recluse, she lives on the edge of a forest in Poland. She spends her days helping her friend Dizzy (Daniel R. Nixon) translate the poetry of William Blake into Polish.
Mrs Duszejko is deeply unrested by the chaos and injustice of the world and obsessed with finding order through astrology. But when men in her village begin dying violently, one by one, Janina becomes convinced she knows exactly what – or who – is responsible.
From the quiet opening when the cast of eleven stand before the audience, blank-faced, we’re thrown into darkness, with only eyes lit up on stage. As the set transforms into a mid-winter snowscape on the Polish-Czech border, actors lend their hands to conjure the world, using paper flakes blown by wind machines to create flurries of snow.
Flack uses inventive staging and atmospheric effects to spark our imaginations and invite us into another world. It feels like a wondrous place straight out of a storybook, with elements of Eastern European fable.
Flack’s adaptation is slick and effortless, staying faithful to the essence of Tokarczuk’s novel, with the poetry of Blake woven through.
Having adapted and directed Ibsen’s Ghosts and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Flack understands the world of literary European theatre, and that understanding comes through. “It’s about the human impact on the world,” he says. He clearly wants us to feel this through the snowflakes, the cold, the summer breeze, and the brutal murder of animals.
The work of movement director Charmene Yap is extraordinary to witness. An award-winning dancer and choreographer, Yap creates a space that moves from buzzing, fascinating activity to quiet, still moments that hold attention effortlessly.
Together with Flack’s energetic direction, they balance long monologues that capture the imagination with frenetic movement that never detracts from the story.
At the centre of it all is Pamela Rabe. As Janina Duszejko, she carries the story, dipping in and out as the eccentric narrator, commenting on the quirks of language, quoting Blake’s poetry and the idiosyncrasies she notices in those around her. She seems bewildered but totally engaged all at once. The true holy fool.
Luminous, relaxed and utterly at ease on stage, Rabe is impossible to look away from. She moves the audience from wonder to bursts of laughter to care and concern, her timing delicately, perfectly on point from the very first moment.
There’s a disarming wonder to her. She’s simultaneously childlike and sharply intellectual, finding delight in something as seemingly trivial as the linguistic peculiarity of a Polish name or the detail in a stranger’s eyes.
As the injustice against animals and the world becomes impossible to contain, we watch her spiral, the grief and rage building. Her performance reminded me of Antony Sher as King Lear in his final role at the RSC. A different kind of unravelling, of course. But with that same quality of barely contained intensity and striking magnetism.
Bruce Spence as Oddball, Janina’s closest companion, is quirky, endearing and thrilling to watch. He holds the room effortlessly with a pause and an offbeat glance. Audiences may recognise him from Mad Max and The Matrix. Daniel R. Nixon as Dizzy is joyous and jittery; brilliantly cerebral and playful in equal measure.
At three and a half hours – generously broken by two intervals – the third act loses a little momentum. A minor note in something truly thrilling and captivating.
The play asks big questions – existential questions that weigh on us now more than ever. It reminds us of the beauty of our existence. But at the same time, our interconnectedness, our responsibility to every living thing. And how neglecting this, in ways large and small, personal and global, has consequences none of us can escape.
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead is like something you want to capture and keep. See it once, and you’ll want to go back.
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead is presented by Belvoir St Theatre and runs to 10 May at the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills NSW 2010.
Tickets: https://my.belvoir.com.au/overview/14648
Website: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/belvoirst/
Photo credits: Brett Boardman
