More than a star vehicle or an ‘impossible’ literary adaptation, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a live-wire collision of Blake, astrology, animal justice, and theatrical invention. It is a prophetic and transgressive production that proves true madness lies not in the woman who sees too much, but in a world that refuses to look.

Set on a remote Polish plateau where winter presses in, the story unfolds as a murky whodunnit told by one of literature’s great antiheroes – an unreliable narrator whose clarity is as unsettling as her contradictions. Janina Duszejko, eccentric, astrological and fiercely devoted to animals, becomes entangled in a string of deaths that rattle her isolated community. 

Belvoir’s staging holds fast to Olga Tokarczuk’s Blakean backbone – the contradictions, the cosmic justice, the sense that every act reverberates through a larger, stranger universe. Adapted and directed by Eamon Flack, it doesn’t simply recount Janina’s suspicions; it builds the world as she perceives it, a place where poetry is prophecy, animals are evidence, and the stars are not decoration but instruction. Flack holds fast to Tokarczuk’s macabre atmosphere and wonderful eccentricities, shaping the sweeping narrative with imagination, precision and a rare sense of play.

Janina is an indomitable voice for the sidelined, a Blake-obsessed intellectual and astrologer whose unfiltered thoughts are mistaken for instability. Janina’s crime is not madness but perception and Pamela Rabe plays this paradox with unnerving control, weaponising a bone-dry delivery to sharpen her simmering rage into something disarming and deeply sympathetic. Rabe delivers a masterclass in subversive magnetism, her charisma and superb timing so effortless the Belvoir stage can barely contain her. Across a spiralling monologue of narration and revelation, she holds the entire production in the palm of her hand.

The ensemble highlights the gap between two worlds: the humans merely look at the landscape, but the animals seem to sense it, to move through it with a deeper, older intelligence. Shifting between human, animal and spirit with uncanny ease, they orbit Rabe with a physicality that feels ritualistic rather than representational. This constant dissolving and reforming of species makes Janina’s internal cosmology visible. They keep the production in constant motion, helped by the expert use of revolving scene changes, which transport us through the scattered locations of the isolated village with a clarity that never breaks the spell.

The staging leans into the story’s eccentricities and flashes of whimsy, giving the three act, three hour runtime a surprising lightness and enough propulsion to keep the mystery tightening rather than sagging.

The men in Janina’s life are far more than background figures; they are the essential refuges that keep her tethered in a world shaped by casual violence. Daniel R. Nixon brings a jittery, poetic warmth to Dizzy, acting as an anchor of sanity whose quiet dignity reveals Janina’s own humanity. Alan Dukes offers a different kind of shelter as Boros, a rare source of emotional softness who sees her as a woman rather than a nuisance and provides a path of quiet preservation that counters her lethal crusade.

It is equally thrilling to see Bruce Spence back on stage, his wry, weathered intelligence deepening the world around Janina and reminding you how rare it is to watch an actor who can shift tone with a single glance. This power of recognition, the way these actors give space for Janina’s fragility and individualism makes her eventual transformation into a force of nature feel like a tragic loss rather than a simple victory.

Flack extends Tokarczuk’s ecological fury into something that quietly dares you to leave changed. Winter becomes a moral judge rather than a backdrop, its cold, unyielding landscape reflecting the community’s indifference to animal life. At its heart is a fierce argument for animal rights — the insistence that animals are not resources or symbols but beings with presence, agency and, as Janina would argue, souls.

More than a literary adaptation, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a prophetic collision of philosophy and theatrical invention, gathering the audience into a communal act of mythmaking. A mystery told in footprints, blood in the snow, constellations and the silence between breaths, it is also incredibly funny in the way only a show can be when it knows the truth is stranger than the crime.It’s not a lecture; it’s not a lesson; it’s an experience, and it leaves you with one reckoning that lands like a warning: Madness is the only honest response to a world that builds its comfort on a foundation of bones.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead plays at Belvoir Street Theatre, Upstairs Theatre, until 10 May.

For further details see ;https://belvoir.com.au/productions/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead/

Follow Faith in Theatres on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for more reviews that look a little closer at the work — the strange, the funny, the unsettling, and everything theatres hope you notice.

Because theatre – needs Faith.