Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead has had a rocky start to its Belvoir journey, with opening night and media night rescheduled a number of times as the production team led by Eamon Flack has tried to get this work right for the eagerly awaiting Belvoir regulars. Based on the 2009 novel by Olga Tokarczuk, Flack’s original draft of the play was over four hours and while it was ultimately cut down to three and a half hours with two intervals, it was still a mammoth commitment for the actors and the production team alike. 

The play centres around Janina Duszejko (played by Australian theatre icon Pamela Rabe), who lives in rural Poland. When dead bodies suddenly begin to appear around her, she sets out to discover who is killing the people in her village. She comes to the conclusion that it is the animals taking their revenge in a form of natural justice, avenging what she considers to be poor treatment. Duszejko is labelled mad and laughed off by the authorities and her community, but as the play progresses, it becomes clear that she is not as crazy as she seems. While the play is technically a murder mystery, it did not feel as such, with very little suspense through the first two acts. The drama only really seemed to pick up in the third act when the deaths started piling up and conclusions began to be drawn.

While Belvoir is living proof of the fact that sometimes three and a half hour plays can produce absolute magic, with Counting and Cracking being arguably the best play that Australia has seen in the past decade, there have unfortunately been a few more misses than hits in recent times. The runtime spanning over 200 minutes for this production was just way too long and became laboured at some points, with the audience struggling to maintain energy. If there had been more focus upon the action, this perhaps would have been more justifiable but the layers of context that make a book so rich just did not quite translate into the play. As successful as longer form work has been for Belvoir, it might be time to go back to some shorter, more concise plays that allow the performers to really show off their talents to the best of their abilities because in this production even Rabe’s incredibly strong delivery and the excellent supporting cast of Arky Michael as Oddball and Daniel R. Nixon as Dizzy had their efforts lost in the depths of this extremely long production.

Romanie Harper’s set was beautiful and very much gave the audience the vibe of being in rural Poland to the extent that it was possible. Ella Butler’s costumes were also well constructed but it seemed as though there were a few mishaps backstage, with some audible injuries being heard on the night of the review. This suggested a production that was still in a teething stage and, combined with the long runtime, one that possibly needed a little bit more development before making it onto the stage. Additionally, the animal costuming, while intriguing at first, also lost its charm as the play continued, as it began to obscure what was already quite a confusing work.

While there was a cast of eleven, it did feel like many of the actors were quite underutilised, with Nadie Kammallaweera (who has given many a fine performance on the Belvoir stage) in particular being on stage for the majority of the show but only having a few spoken lines, which felt ineffective at best. Additionally, for all the discussion about this being a murder mystery, the payoff felt a little flat, with the conclusion visible from a mile away, which is not necessarily something that is desirable in a production with such a lengthy runtime.

While Flack was largely faithful to Tokarczuk’s initial text, which contributed to the length of the play, it felt as though the heart was taken out of the novel, with the ecological angle being the only theme that felt really prescient during the play, with the feminist undertones feeling somewhat lost. This was a shame as while the play had a lot that it could have said and had a cast that had the capacity to explore these themes but it just did not quite work cohesively in the way that was intended.

Overall, while this was an ambitious work, it felt as though it was still in a developmental phase and could have used a little bit more time to hone (and liberally cut). That said, even with all of those changes, I am not completely convinced that this was the work to be turned into a play, as some pieces of literature are simply meant to stand on their own. The acting was strong, with Rabe in particular doing a fantastic job as always, but it did feel like somewhat of an uphill battle for the performers. The spread of reviews clearly shows that reasonable minds may differ on the execution of this production, but ultimately it did feel like a work that was unfortunately defined by its length rather than the undoubtedly high-quality acting performances.

Rating: ★★★

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead plays at the Belvoir St Theatre until 10 May. For more information, click here. 

All photo credits: Brett Boardman