No, these sentences are not in the theatre monologue Mona by Griet Op de Beeck, but sum up the bestseller Come here that I kiss you (28 printings in just under two years) nicely together. Op de Beeck adapted the first part into one of Festival Boulevard's most impressive performances.
We see the sentence of nine-year-old Mona does as a backdrop, complete with childishly drawn rainbow. A set that consists of nothing more than a school desk and the roof of a car. Props are equally austere: a backpack, lunch box and roller skates. Nothing more is needed, either.
Dramaturg
Whereas the first part of the novel is on the long side at over 120 pages, Op de Beeck gets straight to the point in the theatre. An obvious effect of her existence as a dramatist for ten years. So we see nine-year-old Mona writing in a notebook instead of hearing her tell about it, the ice-skating scene from the book is replaced by swaying on roller skates and the visit to the junkyard, where the Citroën DS is parked after the accident that killed her mother, is replaced by that piece of the roof that had to be sawed off to free Mona's mother.
However, father Vincent - nameless in the performance - spared his daughter and her two-year-younger brother Alexander these gruesome details. Mona, in her desire to do above all well, to please everyone, just doesn't ask her father about it. As in almost every family, painful matters are mostly avoided. At most, they come up when drinks are involved.
Big sister
A little later, Mona also accepts new mum Marie, whom her father has soon found, much to Grandma's anger. Even when, on her birthday of all days, Marie tells the family she is pregnant, Mona does not explode. Indeed, she is soon more mother than big sister.
Meanwhile, we learned that Mona's own mother regularly locked her in the basement, father is especially busy with his dental practice, and Marie is totally unable to cope with caring for two stepchildren and a baby. Things therefore go wrong at the end in a desperate attempt by Mona to take the blame for Marie's departure: 'You see? Now I have received my punishment, will you please come home now?'
No, neither are these sentences in Mona, though in the bestseller, but in the second part, when the now adult Mona dismisses her father's belated defence in three words. Sentences that painfully expose what, for adults, makes watching the show - despite all the jokes it certainly contains - a disturbing experience.
Breathe deeply
For what we see is a ten-year-old girl (alternately played by Hannah Hentenaar and
Ilja van Zanten) who confidently and with great acting talent tells a painful and recognisable story. For children, for parents, but above all for anyone who has been a child. All the criticism that Op de Beeck received precisely for the first part of her novel (too precocious a character, giving too much of a child's adult ideas) disappears like snow in the sun with her adaptation, giving way to:
Phrases in book and performance. Especially useful after seeing Mona.
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