DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD

By Diana Simmonds

April 10 2026

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir Street, to 10 May 2026. Photography by Brett Boardman

Taking a 270+ page novel by Nobel Prize-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and turning it into a digestible stage play is not a one-man job. Even the title hints at the need for a team of clear heads: Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead is at once deeply, philosophically William Blake, and also deeply whimsical and gloriously bonkers.

So…things would have been both easier and more rigorous if Eamon Flack were not the adapter and director. A playwright is rarely the one who can kill his darlings. That is: cut, cut, cut. And it’s where the objectivity of another comes in. Anyone really: the artistic director of a company has the ultimate responsibility for what goes on stage. In this instance, however, that person is of course, Eamon Flack. Consequently, his adaptation of the novel was, until scarily recently, some four hours long, and now, after a week of postponement, it’s three and a half hours. And another half hour could and should be cut, with one interval rather than two. (Two? Where are we, West End 1942?)

Nevertheless, Flack’s labour of love is, after a comical yet weirdly stodgy start, immensely entertaining. This is largely down to the towering performance by Pamela Rabe (and not because she’s taller than most). In the decades since she first vogued onto Belvoir’s stage in Cho Cho San and captivated its audiences, Rabe has become that rare thing: a star of substance. A protean figure whose comedy is as rich as her tragedy, and an actor who leaves indelible memories in her wake – without ever having to refer to Wentworth’s “The Freak”.

She brings all this to the role of Mrs Duszejko, a creaky old bird of indeterminate age who lives in relative solitude in a village close to the Czech border. She makes a living of sorts tending to the nearby summer homes of absent city types. She is also an avid astrologer, making charts for anyone who stands still long enough and gives up their birth date. Her views on the planets and their effects, both benign and malign, come tumbling out when the first of a series of deaths occurs. Eminent men of the village are dying – or being murdered – and she is obsessively determined to find out how and why.

In this quest, Mrs Duszejko is aided and abetted, when not hindered, by a wildly over-qualified and wickedly under-utilised ensemble of crème de la crème talent. In A-Z order: Alan Dukes, Bruce Spence, Colin Moody, Daniel R. Nixon, Emma Diaz, Gareth Davies, Marco Chiappi, Nadie Kammallaweera, Paula Arundell, and Ziggy Resnick. The company not only doubles roles but also shifts the furniture, and the choreography of the various elements – humans, cottage window, tree trunk, doorway, chairs and so on – is credited to Charmene Yap, and well done her. Well done too to stage manager Luke McGettigan’s crew as they contend with the wintry landscape of endless snow and flurries of sun-signifying gold glitter.

Romanie Harper’s spare set design makes much, and good use of a massive revolve and the already mentioned notional elements. Lighting, by Morgan Moroney, also accomplishes that alchemical thing of suggesting winter chill and fleeting summer, as well as unusually intense blackouts (turn off your damn phones, people). Then there are the costumes from Ella Butler: an eye candy mix of sumptuous and spare, where Mittel-European peasant gear is incongruously pleasing in conjunction with mobile phones.

The sound design (Alyx Dennison with associate Madeleine Picard) is an intriguing combination of voice, as the company chorally hums the evening to life; dawn bird song brings hope, but there are abstract and disturbing vocal concepts in case you should relax into thinking Poland’s Miss Marple is going to solve everything.

Drive Your Plow is crazily flawed for reasons described above, but it is also – once it gets going – a great story and told with energy and conviction. Pamela Rabe is central and vital to the venture, even while she builds to a throat-ripping crescendo as Mrs Duszejko goes over the top. Don’t drink too much beforehand, maybe have a handful of NõDõz ready for a second interval emergency, and go with the flow, or as they say in small Polish villages: “płynąć z prądem”.