She looks exhausted, and is suffering from a never-explained illness. She's a woman on a mission, to make the people around her reflect on the morality and implications of hunting and killing animals. She's on stage for the entirety of the show and oscillates between anger and compassion, blind hopefulness and deep depression with real believability. This is a testament to Simon McBurney's directing and the faultless performances throughout the cast. This gradual unravelling of the narrative we've been sold is so skilfully done that we are both surprised and not surprised by the revelation that what we have been told so far isn’t the full truth. Janina is an unreliable narrator, and while the audience warms to her we also doubt her. Her use of the microphone on a stand almost like a comedian lends a deliberately lighter air to things.Īlexander Uzoka, César Sarachu, Kathryn Hunter, Weronika Maria

Her asides to the audience and her cynicism lighten the sometimes very dark mood.

Janina Duszejko, played by Kathryn Hunter in a remarkable performance, is strong, funny and refuses to be intimidated by the boorish men surrounding her. If this all sounds very heavy, it's because it is. The ideas are big and the theatrical experience matches them - here we have themes about ecocide, hunting, activism, spirituality, religion, morality, existentialism - and fundamentally what it means to be alive. At nearly three hours it requires a commitment from the audience.

READ MORE: Join the FREE Manchester Evening News WhatsApp communityįirst things first. This is the setup for Olga Tokarczuk's 2009 novel 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead', which has been adapted for the stage in an extraordinary production at The Lowry theatre by internationally renowned theatre company Theatre de Complicité.Īt its heart this play is a murder mystery - but this is a 'whodunnit' unlike any you've seen before. They're taking their revenge.Īs the men continue to die in unpleasant ways we learn that Janina has recently lost her two beloved dogs - she refers to them as her 'daughters' and is bereft at their disappearance. Janina Duszejko, an older woman who plots astrological charts and translates William Blake, has a theory: she thinks the men are being killed because they're hunters - and it's the animals who are doing it. In a Polish village near the Czech border men keep dying in violent ways, their bodies are discovered surrounded by animal tracks in the snow.

Plough over the bones of the dead