A magnificent adaptation of the work of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk

2023-11-04 13:58:44

Municipal Theater of Girona. High Season 2023 Complicité – Simon McBurney November 2

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead [Llaureu sobre els ossos dels morts] is “a surprising amalgam of thrillercomedy and political treatise,” Sarah Perry wrote in the paper The Guardian following the publication in England of the novel of the same name by Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk.

Certainly, the play, which takes its title from William Blake’s poem Proverbs from hell, is a mystery novel with corpses and cops. It takes place during the winter in a Polish plateau close to the Czech border and a series of strange murders take place there. And it is also true that the point of view of the narrator – Janina, an eccentric lover of astrology who was an engineer, who now teaches small children and who sees in crimes an outraged reaction of nature – is imbued with ‘ironic and humorous notes of an eminently political nature. Above all, it distills a lucid ecological and animalistic reflection on our society and the relationship of the individual with the environment.

It was not easy to turn the novel into a stage proposal, but, without a doubt, such a challenge was viable in the hands of one of the most veteran companies in European theater, and which has visited us relatively regularly, Simon’s Complicité McBurney, who six years ago now presented at the Greek Festival a powerful adaptation of Beware of pity (The Impatience of the Heart) by Stefan Zweig. McBurney respects the format of the narrative and its poetics by standing on the shoulders of a fabulous Amanda Hadingue (the protagonist of the film The Queen) the responsibility of bringing the story to us over the course of almost three hours. It is she who dominates the word, and in what way!, while around her the rest of the cast creates images with choral actions that, together with a series of disturbing and pictorial projections, support the story and build a powerful visual dramaturgy, a bit obscure, yes.

There aren’t many dialogues, but the fun encounter with an entomologist with whom he shares a joint should be noted, which accentuates the comedy. It is a very textual show, with the consequent requirement to read subtitles, which somewhat diminishes attention to the scene, but a show to enjoy and which invites you to read Tokarczuk.