Ganesh Versus the Third Reich review – stunning, provocative work claps back to a new world of fascism

Throughout their 30 year history, Geelong’s Back to Back Theatre have built a body of work remarkable for its generosity, courage and intellectual acuity; they’re seemingly incapable of glibness or conceptual laziness. The company won the world’s richest theatre prize, the Ibsen award (2.5m Norwegian kroner; A$380,000), in 2022, following it up with the Gold Lion at Venice in 2024. Ganesh Versus the Third Reich – which has toured the world since its 2011 premiere and is now in Melbourne before heading to the Festival d’Automne in Paris – is one of their finest and most daring works, reminding audiences of this company’s genius and gumption. It is returning right when we needed it.The play is, as the title suggests, a provocation that interrogates spirituality, politics and the enduring power of symbols, refracted through the meta-theatrical device of the rehearsal room. Given that Back to Back is a company primarily composed of people who identify as having an intellectual disability or neurodivergence, the themes of power imbalance, reclamation and self-actualisation reverberate thrillingly. In the beginning, Ganesh (Brian Tilley) is urged by his parents Shiva and Parvati to reclaim the ancient Hindu symbol of the swastika from the Nazis. He travels by train to Berlin – in an eerie reminder of the trains that carried people with disability to the concentration camps – to confront Hitler (Simon Laherty) directly. This narrative line converges with another, the putting on of the play, as the actors break the fourth wall and address each other by their real names. In this way, the devastating resonances of epic theatre are given quotidian real world mirrors, and we see the horrors of ideology play out in the lives of the performers. Related: Virginia Gay: ‘Shakespeare’s most overrated play? Hamlet. Too long’ Central to the work’s sense of danger is the presence of neurotypical actor David Woods, who seems to be the show’s director. He is initially calm and su…