If George & Eran Productions’ new theater performance had a label, you’d find all the ingredients for a classic adventure story on it. There is a missing childhood sweetheart and a pile of dusty letters, which set a real road trip in motion. The two adventurers who have to go on a journey together are very different, but in the end they unravel the mystery together.
Presentation Mia .’s letters (from 9 years) is based on the book of the same name by Astrid Sy. Theater maker George Elias Tobal made a stage adaptation of this, in which the Syrian Laila (Liza Macedo dos Santos) does odd jobs for an old man, Isa Cohen (Peter van Heeringen), for a school assignment. In the attic, she discovers a box of letters from his childhood sweetheart, Mia (Britte Lagcher), who went missing in the war. Laila immediately wants to find out what happened, while Isa prefers to leave the war behind.
A world of characters
Directed by Eran Ben-Michaël, this story is clearly told in a beautiful staging. The heavy and light moments are well balanced. Scenes jump from a classroom in an asylum seekers’ center to Isa’s house or to moments that happened in the past. When Laila reads the letters, young Mia and Isa come to life on the stage. They were in love, but also Jewish in the Second World War, which drove them apart: Mia wants to join the resistance, while Isa’s family is considering volunteering for a transport to one of the camps.
The relatively small cast plays a world of characters, so there are many double roles. For example, Milan Sekeris plays a cheerful teacher and a German soldier. He also makes atmospheric musical contributions to the piece. Actors David Lucieer and Gonca Karasu also play different characters with flair. Lucieer, for example, is the young Isa and an elderly man, who still gives very energetic tours of a former camp; Karasu plays a grumpy classmate or the seductive neighbor.
The war theme has been carefully worked out and works in several directions, with Laila as a contemporary asylum seeker and Mia who fled during the Second World War. The characters also have quite a bit of depth, which ultimately shows why Laila is so involved in the search. She turns out to be more than a curious student, seduced by adventure.