Who Wants to Kill Yulia Tymoshenko?

Without a doubt, the continued imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko has punched irreparable holes through the thin veneer of Ukranian democracy. Incarcerated since 2011 on trumped up charges, the former businesswoman, academic and politician's two hunger strikes have so far failed to focus the beam of international attention on a slowly failing state, under the increasingly authoritarian presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. Unfortunately, by joining the fight on the regime's own battleground of propaganda and declamation, this preposterous and insupportable hagiography of a modern saint adds little to that cause.

A two-hander set in a Ukranian prison, the cast (playing Tymoshenko and her cellmate) deliver spirited, if not especially nuanced performances. But enthusiasm can't really skate over a script quite this slushy. With commentable earnestness, they plod thorough a series of turgid similes ("Ukraine was like a girl who was locked up and then set free"), paint-by-numbers characterisations ("my mother worked like a machine from dusk 'till dawn and never complained"), and cartoon political fanaticism. "My people must have a leader", remonstrates the fictional Tymoshenko, stripped of complexity and daubed instead in the primary colours of political heroism. Preposterously, she sports prison-issue high heels and a pencil skirt; she is unfathomably enlightened as to her cellmate's true identity; she fixes a broken radio with her bare hands.

An attempt to parallel the politician's relationship with her hapless cellmate with that of her troubled country comes as a final assertion of this drama's well-intentioned crassness. "You will believe in me until I believe in myself", sobs the newly conscious cellmate. Unbelievable.