Two In Your House attempts to explore and problematise political action in a domestic setting, looking at the house as a symbol of the nation. It aims to create a fissure in the perception of the public political figure and its relationship with the state, dramatically articulating inherent antagonisms. Part documentary and part fiction, the play, devised by Moscow-based Teatr.doc, is based on interviews and research around the KGB’s house arrest of leading cultural figure Vladimir Neklyaev, Belarusian poet and activist. Despite its potent theatrical conflicts, it’s a surprisingly tepid and grey portrait of contemporary dissent.

Teatr.doc are a Moscow-based theatre company who focus on bringing to the stage turbulent political and social events. Their base is a real hotspot for politically active audiences in Moscow and renowned for its fierce post-show debates. At Krakow’s largest international theatre festival, Two in Your House comes with a confrontational mythology. 

Neklyaev took part in the December 2010 presidential elections in Belarus. Whilst on his way to a rally to support his candidature, he was severely beaten, taken to the hospital with brain injuries and immediately detained and imprisoned by the KGB. What resulted was a two-month period of house arrest, during which he was only able to see his wife Olga and his physician. In the meantime Alexander Lukashenko entered his fourth term as Belarusian president and numerous riots across Minsk and the country were severely suppressed.

Throughout the eighty minutes, we are confined within the borders of a small flat in which Neklayaev, his wife, and three KGB guards engage in a constant game of power in which personal space becomes social transaction. The play attempts to remain domestic, focusing on the most mundane aspects of the house arrest, from sharing a bathroom to using cutlery in the kitchen, from fighting over who watches what on TV to listening to music. For Olga, ‘order is a natural thing, it’s convenient’. For the KGB guards, this is simply a job, yet one with severe personal repercussions. Two in Your House is a conflict of personal narratives that becomes, in its specificity, a political landscape.

It’s a fired, competitive and exhausting game of cohabitation in which each party attempts to embody their own ideology. For writer Elena Gremina and director Mikhail Ugarov, the episodic plot allows for enough contextual information on Nakleyaev to protrude, but there’s emphasis on a shift in the internal politics. If in the beginning this is an unnatural game of oppositions, the conflict that develops extends beyond the thick walls of the flat.

Yet the play relies too heavily on its inherent political relevance to carry its dramatic weight. It raises a question about what makes theatre a political act. Despite engaging character portraits and often intriguing dramatic conflicts, no argument materialises. There’s a potent theatrical possibility in the insight which Teatr.doc bring to the house arrest, yet this is never married with its source material and context. It’s as if Teatr.doc have pinned the concept but never realized how to articulate it dramatically. The house as site of political struggle, the tension between the perception of a public figure and the reality of political mobility are never fully articulated in the drama. The underpinning conflict of breaching private space is never questioned. 

Naklyaev’s case remains unresolved, more so, the relationship between his writing and his activism, but also his perception as a public figure in Belarus. The outcome of his trial is symbolic of this antagonism, and oddly enough, the play ends with no position towards this curious resolve. This is a dramatic nuance that, in the context of the play, feels essential to the theatrical argument; instead, it feels like a stale ending. Teatr.doc refuse to portray Neklyaev as martyr, yet there is no indication as to what his position is in this political debate. His private space was made public asset for the duration of the house arrest, but as portrayed in Two in Your House, this is inconsequential.

At its strongest, Two in Your House gives a potent flavour of the ideological and personal boundaries inherent in the home as a site of struggle. It is packed with wit and charm, serving as an incomplete portrait of a significant recent event whose cultural and political life is short-lived despite its implications. As a drama, it’s less corrosive, failing to posit a meaningful question about the relationship between the personal and the public, weighed down by conflicting responsibilities.