The production’s blend of philosophical purpose and irreverent humor rings true to the book’s spirit, and makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking spectacle. Along the way she holds forth on animal cruelty, astrology and her love of the English poet William Blake.Ĭomplicité’s decision to foreground these freewheeling digressions is to be commended: This is not a conventional whodunit but, rather, a kind of fable. The narrator-protagonist, Janina, a semiretired teacher and passionate animal lover in her 60s, takes a keen interest in the case, pestering the local police force with her unsolicited insights and pushing a bizarre theory that, since all the victims were avid hunters or poachers, the murders must have been carried out by animals as an act of revenge.
Tokarczuk’s novel revolves around a series of grisly murders in a remote village in southern Poland. It runs at the Barbican Theater in London through April 1, then tours Britain before playing at some major European venues and festivals, including the Ruhrtriennale in Germany, and the Odéon - Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris. The British troupe, led by the director Simon McBurney, has already created acclaimed productions from Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Max Porter’s “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.”Ĭomplicité’s latest show is a suitably idiosyncratic treatment of “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” the surreal eco-thriller by the Polish author and Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk.
Some books lend themselves to stage adaptation more than others, and the experimental theater company Complicité has a strong track record of turning awkward novels into plays.
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