#Review: Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead – 25.4.23, The Lowry, Salford

For many of us, a new piece of work from Complicité isn’t just a play we’d like to see, it’s an unmissable theatrical event. That’s a huge level of expectation. Can Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead possibly live up to it?

Set in Poland, and based on a novel by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, this is the story of Janina, a fiercely independent, fiercely alive, fiercely female sexagenarian who has made it her mission to try and protect the natural world around her from the excesses of those who abuse it, and refuses to despair and become powerless in the face of overwhelming odds.

In the hands of living theatrical legend Kathryn Hunter, this European Amazon warrior is not only a force of nature herself, but also a force of the supernatural, her astrological prognostications about the likely fates of her antagonists turning out to be freakily accurate. One by one, locals she considers guilty of eco-crimes face the wrath of a natural world that no longer accepts their dominance, the animals themselves seemingly becoming their judges and juries.

It’s the first time I’ve seen Kathryn Hunter in the flesh. I believe the Joel Coen film of The Tragedy of Macbeth (which she very nearly steals) is still available to stream on Apple TV – one of the best screen adaptations of Shakespeare, but even if it wasn’t, it’d be worth watching for her performance alone. She’s just as electric on stage, a real powerhouse of a performer who holds our attention for the best part of three hours, and makes that look easy.

Whilst Hunter is very much the beating heart of all that ensues, this is also an ensemble piece, with all in the eleven-strong cast helping create not just a large cast of characters, but also much of the world in which they reside. 

I last saw Tim McMullen as a wonderful Sir Toby Belch in the National Theatre’s Twelfth Night, and he’s just as wonderful here in roles including that of poet William Blake.

I could use the same adjective to describe the performances of everyone else on stage, familiar and unfamiliar; ditto the artistic input of everyone else involved – to find out the names of those that shine, simply see the programme for the whole list of cast and creatives.

In the programme, Director Simon McBurney professes ‘a profound belief that all aspects of the theatre should challenge the limits of theatrical form’. It’s no exaggeration. While there are a few aspects of Complicité’s stagecraft I’ve seen used before, I’ve rarely seen them done so well, or given such full expression.

You may well see productions that use lighting as well, but I’m struggling to think of any which makes such impressive use of darkness – Not I, perhaps; though that is almost totally pitch black.

Just as notably, while some productions that use a variety of theatrical forms feel disjointed, the way they’re used here feels part of a coherent whole.

Then there are also aspects of their theatrical ‘grammar’ that I haven’t seen elsewhere. One example: someone points out an approaching car to Janina. In the normal course of things, the order would be: we see the car appear – the character sees it – the character points it out to the protagonist – the protagonist sees it. Here, a character sees the car – the character points it out to the protagonist – the protagonist sees it – then we see it.

This has the effect of giving a real sense of physical distance; but even more significantly, it makes the protagonist feel not only like she’s at the centre of the story, but that she actually brings the story itself into existence. It’s a powerful feeling, and one that adds to Hunter’s already beautifully beguiling stage presence, to the extent that I wouldn’t be in the slightest surprised to find out she’s a Shaman in real life.

I’d love to know the word count of the piece – there are a lot. If I’d been told beforehand just how much narration there is, I might have wondered if the play needed to be a piece of theatre at all; might it not just as well be a radio play? At least, I might have thought that, until you told me it was a Complicité production.

I likewise might have doubted that animals could be portrayed by people not only without costumes, but without anything you could accurately call imitation. Rather, we have here a sort of embodiment that feels like a tangible link to our ancestral cave-dwellers, telling stories by firelight. It’s a startlingly moving experience.

I did wonder whether some strands of the story might be left unresolved, though I’d imagine that sense of things being neatly tied up is most likely out of respect for the source material. In fact, I still find myself wondering if even that sense of completion might be a bit of very subtle misdirection.

In any case, this is isn’t just theatrical storytelling of the highest order; it’s magical myth-making, weaving an eco-fable seemingly out of thin air. To achieve that lightness of touch when this is also quite a technical show is astounding.

The large-scale back projection (for example) is at times dreamlike, at times arcane, but always there in support of the piece, never overpowering it. To make such technical wizardry feel like it might be actual wizardry is – well, magical.

I believe Drive Your Plough is available to stream – a great option if you can’t get to the theatre. But if you can get to see it in person – do. You won’t be disappointed.

[*The programme also highlights the campaign to make ecocide – “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge there will be widespread or long-term damage to the environment” – illegal under international law. Given the alternative is the destruction of the only home we have, it’s a campaign we should all support. See www.stopecocide.earth for details.]