Not the most catchy title we have ever published but this play Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is at the Bristol Old Vic, until Saturday, February 11.

Based on the brilliant Polish Pulitzer-prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk’s novel of the same name, the play tells the atmospherically-creepy story of an eccentric, reclusive old woman in a small, all-but abandoned village on the Czech-Polish border who's convinced she knows why murders are happening.

Janina, ex-engineer and environmentalist, spends dark winter and snow-bound days studying astrology, translating William Blake’s poetry and taking care of the wealthy summer homes of up-market Warsaw residents, who leave in droves once frosts set in. Janina, played by Amanda Hadingue, prefers animals to people and happily goes about her quiet life, until a neighbour, Big Foot, turns up dead.

The bodies of the local hunting club pile up, in increasingly strange circumstances.

Janina turns her forensic eye upon seeking out the perpetrator but is dismissed, particularly when she thinks it’s the animals acting strangely.

The novel, and this wonderfully acted play, is both thriller and fairy tale that focuses on the liminal line between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. 

Why is killing animals sport and humans murder?

Touring company Complicité's new work is ably directed by Simon McBurney.