★★★ Amanda Hadingue is phenomenal as the heroine of this murder-mystery-cum-eco-fable set in a remote Polish village 🖋️ FionaLondonarts
on which the play is based – a murder-mystery-cum-eco-fable, with more than a few hints of magical realism about it. Hadingue’s fierce and quizzical determination anchors the piece when its meandering narrative threatens to become too much of a shaggy dog story. Or perhaps that should be shaggy deer story.
The play revolves around 60-something Janina Duszejko, a former teacher and passionate environmentalist Janina lives in a remote rural Polish village near the Czech border, a place where the blood lust of the local hunters appears to know no bounds. Janina is repulsed by this wanton killing of living creatures for sport and the trigger for the action is the discovery of the dead body of a particularly cruel member of the hunting fraternity. Other unexplained deaths follow and Janina, a keen amateur astrologist, begins to wonder whether the animals themselves are exacting some sort of revenge.
One of Tokarczuk’s principal themes is the interconnectedness of man and nature and the damage that follows when this all-important link is broken. Her other key target is patriarchal power structures, whether in the form of the police or the Catholic church. Janina’s reports of illegal hunting practices fall constantly on deaf male ears and she is routinely dismissed as a “woman of a certain age”.
At its best, McBurney’s production, which unfolds in near darkness, has a mystical aura as it accumulates layers of atmospheric details. The ten-strong multinational ensemble is fluid and flexible and the work is beguilingly theatrical; it simply could not exist as film or television.
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