Adelaide Festival. Toneelhuis / FC Bergman. 6 Mar 2026
Works and Days is the most darkly brutal, melancholic, yet awe inspiring expression of humanity’s devolution.
A production absorbed in darkness as the transition from rural agricultural society to the robotic present processes wordlessly as a series of scenes. Collaboration and effort are mired in dry, gritty, sometimes comedic, yet unfulfilling reality.
The tone of the work is set as the stage floor is torn up by a plough, by hand, as seed is spread through the furrows. There’s nothing joyous about it. Nothing natural, nothing fruitful or bountiful.
The peasant level harshness of this life is accentuated. Not the the mythical joy. Yet it is hinted at in the comic moment of love-making by two peasants and seemingly playful Maypole moment, which is anything but.
Even the produce of the ‘earth’ offered as red, green and yellow oblongs of wood, are not heartening.
What does hint, yearn even, of the mythology of joy behind human progress, and darkness (whatever that is) is the score, performed live by Joachim Badenhorst and Sean Carpio.
Flute, harpsichord, and bass saxophone are deployed to create a deeply emotive, genuinely soul-like spirit beneath the mechanical, sometimes barbaric moments of each phase of social/industrial development. There’s a real battle to engage, as the music’s powerful impact of spirit and myth, does not reconcile with the harsh vision before us.
Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, and Marie Vinck’s direction, scenario, and scenography, is faultless in transition of phrasing. We are in no doubt of where we are in time, no doubt of intention but always left with questions. This outcome is powerfully supported by Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, and Ken Hioco’s lighting design. It is very delicate and subtle with an extremely keen eye on ensuring even bright colour maintains a focus on the darker side of this journey of supposed progress.
We are left with a very real conundrum to consider. What has humanity spent thousands of years doing during its days and all its works? Fighting against nature? Now fighting against its own technology?
David O’Brien
When: 6 to 8 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
