Andrei Urazau and Pavel Haradnitski in Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors. Photo by Alex Brenner.
Creating an overtly political work for the stage is a fraught process. For every successful production – the searing Who’s Afraid of the Working Class by Andrew Bovell, Irine Vela, Christos Tsiolkas, Patricia Cornelius and Melissa Reeves, or Too Young for Ghosts by Janis Balodis – there’s a Two Brothers waiting in the wings, in which complex political themes are reduced to ‘easily digestible binaries’, to quote critic Alison Croggon.
