Brothers
(Fratii)

By Sebastian Barry
Directed by Alexandru Dabija (Romania)

Premiere: October 1, 2000 - Bucharest (Romania)

Co-production Théâtre ODEON (Bucharest, Romania), Hebbel Theater (Berlin, Germany), SMART (Bucharest, Romania), THEOREM (association supported by the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union)

Two brothers live together on a big farm. They are slowly dying of old age, loneliness, lack of love and communication. They start dreaming of women and evoking their dead relatives. Old Josey tends to transform everything into beauty, Mick on the other hand has visions without being altered. He reproaches his brother for escaping into a more beautiful world than his own. Realistic scenes alternate with dream sequences. Throughout the performance, dancers move in the wings, representing the inaccessible world of an elegant life, a terrible contrast underlying the two brothers’ distress. In this play by Sebastian Barry, one of Ireland’s leading contemporary playwrights, Alexandru Dabija has found a parallel between Irish and Romanian mentalities: if this reality is all there is to life, we should escape it via fantasy. Dabija presents the endless struggle between the real and the imaginary in human beings weakened by old age, loneliness, and lack of solidarity.