Verbluffende transformaties van Shelley Mitchell in indringende monoloog ‘Talking with Angels’ #tf2010

Invisible forces, described as angels, speaking through a Jewish woman to her friends at the time of the Holocaust in Hungary. A mysterious and true story, translated by American actress Shelley Mitchell into the one-woman performance Talking with Angels. A huge success in America. Yesterday on stage for the first time in the Netherlands.

A candlestick, cross, table and chair are the only set pieces during Shelley Mitchell's two-hour monologue. This is just as well, because the audience needs all its concentration to follow the long poetic texts of the 'angels'. As a counterpart to the big Broadway shows, the actress wanted to put on a pure performance. Without frills, with a lot of depth. For this, she took a book that impressed her: Talking with Angels, written by the Hungarian Gitta Mallasz.

Mitchell tells the story from an 84-year-old Mallasz's point of view. This graphic designer saved more than 100 Jewish women and children from deportation during World War II. Her heroic story runs as a thread through the performance. As Mallasz, the actress explains how she and her three Jewish friends got into conversation with higher powers. Searching for meaning, they met every week to share their thoughts. One day, one of the women received inexplicable messages. She no longer spoke as herself, but as different angels. This resulted in eighty-eight philosophical conversations with angels about life.

Mitchell chose the messages she found most important and turned them into short monologues. During the performance, she transforms time and again, in mere seconds, from Mallasz to the angels. Without leaving the stage. She does this with such conviction that, as a spectator, you forget that there is only one woman on stage. Subtle changes in facial expressions, voice and posture bring all the characters to life in a stunning way. Mitchell needs no aids to keep changing into a 20-year-old woman or supernatural being.

Her beautiful, penetrating playing is therefore what makes the audience watch her breathlessly for two hours. The messages of angels are harder to take in. Perhaps, Mallasz explained, because they had to be converted to human language. Recurring themes are responsibility, self-awareness and independence. "You achieve your new self when you follow your own path, develop your talent and stay true to yourself at all times," he said. One of the clear messages the angels gave them. And with it, the audience. Except for a few explicit references to Christianity, Mitchell has chosen not to force a direction on the audience in her adaptation. This leaves room for their own interpretation.

As Mitchell began, so does she end the play. As the elderly Mallasz, describing how her friends were finally killed. She closes by saying, "I won't say I understand everything I just shared with you. I don't." With this, she reassures the audience. They too do not have to understand everything.

Seen: De Balie Amsterdam, Thursday 2 September.