You can always rely on theatre company Complicite to find something obscure and off-the-wall to adapt for the stage, and so it is again here, a Polish novel by Nobel prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk that is both a mystery about the deaths of hunters and an environmental man vs nature polemic.
Janina Duszejko, an eccentric old woman in a small mountain community, is both our protagonist and narrator. Her passions are the environment, animal rights and astrology. She is continually challenging men in power, and continually being put down by them. Though there is a linear narrative about the murders, the overarching theme is cohabitation of the planet between man and nature, and it goes off at tangents and in flashbacks into Janina’s world. It ends brilliantly with the narrator revealing whodunnit, and why.
The storytelling is illustrated by scenes played out on stage by nine performers in Complicite’s stylised combination of movement, mime and physical theatre, with Rae Smith’s predominantly black & white design featuring brilliant projected images and graphics on and behind them, and a highly atmospheric soundscape with original music. Kathryn Hunter is mesmerising as Janina / the narrator, onstage virtually throughout.
I felt it didn’t sustain it’s three hour length, though with better starting and interval timekeeping it would have been tighter, but Simon McBurney’s production was captivating storytelling nonetheless. Good to see Complicite back with a new work after six years or so.
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