Review by Jo Tomalin
For All Events
Works and Days
Works and Days is produced by FC Bergman / Toneelhuis and presented by the Edinburgh International Festival, August 2025 at The Lyceum. FC Bergman’s reflection on the poem Works and Days from the Ancient Greek poet Hesiodos “on living on and with the land” and all of the circumstances between birth, life and death is the starting point for this piece. FC Bergman is a four-person collective that creates site specific productions and installations that focus on themes of the working person.
The collective comprises Stef Aerts, Joe Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck who are the Directors, Dramaturgs & Set Designers. They also perform in Works and Days together with additional cast members Susan De Ceuster, Gert Goossens, Fumiyo Ikeda, Maryam Sserwamukoko.
A superb set piece center stage suggests a rusty plough from long ago. In fact, we are being taken back to when people lived on and from the land. The cast of eight characters wear unmatched work clothes in gray and brown tones with costume design by An d’Huys are clearly at home in this stark environment.
This is a world where farmers forge tools with their bare hands and use only body strength to work across fields – sometimes pushing a well used plough to rip up the earth. Others sew seeds as they follow the ploughed earth. Drum beats help the community work together to raise the heavy timber framework of a barn. They find an unsuspecting chicken who gives the townsfolk an egg, the chicken joined in the with sounds and we enjoyed watching its chirruping! Everyone works here to earn a living of the basics, food and a roof over their heads.
From a sacrifice nailed to a pole shows they are really living off the land and use everything – unlike the waste that is produced from our busy lives today. However, this is an offbeat, abstracted expression of daily work and its rituals that is certainly intriguing. Musicians onstage provide the rhythmic strength for everyone to be able to haul up timber structures. Visually, this is theme, design and lifestyle is very appealing and it takes a while to get in step and focus while trying to forget our appendages of technology that most of us insist on carrying around day and night!
While the homesteaders dress up their house with colorful fabric the story reflects how much we pay attention to worldly goods, when we have access to them. However, these townsfolk revere the huge statues of the future by their naked bodies coiling around them. Curious organ music plays at times, or a wonderful haunting tenor sax and more, which add so much to this life before our own reality, from composers and musicians Joachim Badenhorst and Sean Carpio. In fact this is a reality check for us to consider, knowing that there are still people living in these simple times relying on the tried and true farming and harvesting methods, without the technology that we rely on so much today. Highly Recommended!
4 Stars!
More information:
Edinburgh International Festival
https://www.eif.co.uk/
Originally from England Jo Tomalin is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is a reviewer for Dance & Theatre at www.ForAllEvents.com and works in the performing arts as a freelance movement specialist, director + actor. She is also a Professor of theatre performance in the School of Theatre & Dance at San Francisco State University, teaching Movement and Voice for actors, Storytelling and Acting.
Jo Tomalin studied Classical Ballet for 12 years. She graduated from London University’s Laban Centre teaching credential program in Modern Dance, Art of Movement & Choreography, then she trained in Physical Theatre, Masks, and Devised theatre at the renowned professional acting school “Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq” Paris, France. Jo studied Classical Acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London; and holds an A.T.C.L. in Voice and Acting from Trinity College of Dramatic Art, London, and a PH.D. in Education from Capella University, MN, USA.
