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Discover Love
Brisbane Powerhouse, in the programme notes for its World Theatre Festival, says “We bring you some of the world’s illicit and atypical theatre, chosen to push your buttons and get you talking. Unearth what lies beneath your understanding of how you influence the world and how the world influences you.”
This show did all of that in spades. As the title suggests, it is based around the protagonist’s discovery of love: how she starts out missing her absent father, meets her first love and finally the love of her life.
The strange – and, in the beginning, apparently incongruous – subplot is about the “disappeared”: people who went missing in Belarus for opposing the hegemony. (But this story could be substituted for any country where this sort of macabre political intrigue occurs). Based on real events that are almost impossible to comprehend, this show is Political with a capital P; the company actually has to perform it, and other shows, in secret in their home country of Belarus. Despite this, it is a story that involves us all.
I wasn’t in the best mood the evening I attended but the show just cut right through all that. Maryna Yourevich in the lead role made me laugh, she made me cry and – most poignantly – she made me care. Her warmth, strength, emotion and charisma really shone through.
Discover Love showed us the very pinnacle of what theatre can achieve.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Brisbane Powerhouse and Belarus Free Theatre present
Discover Love
Part of the World Theatre Festival 2012
Brisbane Powerhouse
16–19 February 2012
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