Talking with Angels: Budapest, 1943

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Talking With Angels: Budapest, 1943 is a Holocaust themed work with convoluted twists.  The play is in the ostensible form of a 1991 lecture at the London School of Economics given by Gitta Mallasz, aged 82, talking about her experiences in wartime Budapest.  These involve visits by what she called Angels and the extraordinary details of how she saved over a hundred Jews from deportation to concentration camps.

The play is one long flashback to the halcyon days before the Nazis invaded the supposedly neutral Hungary to get at the Jews, the last remaining large population in Europe.  Mallasz, played by Shelley Mitchell who also adapted the original non-fiction book, takes her lecture audience back to her hometown of Budapest.

Gitta had been a respected and admired Olympic level swimmer and had become a commercial illustrator along with her close friends: Hanna, an artist, and her architect husband Joseph, and the beautiful Lili who was described as a mix between Martha Graham and Audrey Hepburn.

Her three intellectual pals are Jewish and all four were highly educated, familiar with philosophy, history and current events. They form a highly successful graphic arts business.  (Witty samples of their work are projected onto several screens along with images of old Budapest, illustrations of what the Angels would describe and other photographs of places mentioned in the extended lecture.)

They would all four meet for genteel conversations over coffee and food, a time that was heavenly to Gitta.  She makes a point that none of this convivial quartet believed in such things as astrology and tarot cards.  They also studied and discussed religions and philosophies such as the I Ching, Lao Tsu, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Bible and Rumi: in other words, four open-minded professionals who were total ambushed by what happened to them.

Out of the blue, this warm, loving oasis is invaded, not by the Nazi onslaught, but by the Angels of the title.  Hanna, for some unknown reason, starts channeling Gitta’s Angel who is filled with ominous predictions.  Then comes Lili’s Angel and after that Joseph’s, each with different pronouncements and all impersonated by Mitchell who tries her best to differentiate one Angel from another, not very successfully.

So much of Talking with Angels is taken up by the rantings of these otherworldly emenations, which are filled increasingly by cryptic, impenetrable spoutings referencing religious imagery, that the play loses all momentum.  Even though these Angels are the eponymous subjects, the really dramatic stretch of the play begins with Gitta’s plan to save not only her Jewish intimates, but scores of Jewish women after these Friday kaffeeklatsch idylls are suddenly interrupted as the Nazis bomb and then enter Budapest with frightening speed.

Gitta’s strategy involves a local Catholic Church whose priest, Father Klinda, cooperates in the plan which involves turning the frightened Jewish women into manufacturers of shirts for the local version of the Nazi Storm troopers, the Nyilas, who were far more vindictive than the Nazis.  The fact that a former priest, Father Kun, had become the truly evil leader of the local Nyilas regiment causes consternation amongst the Jewish shirt makers.

Gitta’s brilliant idea, fraught with tension, is further compromised by the construction of a Nazi base next door to the church.  Counterintuitively, the presence of the Nazis is a temporary boon to Gitta’s escape plan.  It is through their garden that escape is possible after she impresses these SS guards with her intelligence and perfect German.

Of course, it is the rare Holocaust remembrance that has a happy ending and this isn’t one of them.  The ghastly fates of Gitta’s three Jewish pals are detailed providing the emotional jolt that this one-hander needs after too many minutes of esoteric lectures by the otherworldly spirits whose speeches become harder and harder to comprehend.

I have to question the efficacy of the dramaturg, Amy Marie Seidel and the director Molly Shayna Cohen for not paring Talking with Angels down to its essentials, particularly since what the Angels say has nothing to do with the rescue efforts which are truly the stuff of theater.  There’s a huge difference between a play and a biographical book.

Mitchell is a mature woman and a fine actor.  She almost makes all the spiritual diversions work, but confusion sets in when it becomes impossible to define whose Angel belongs to what character.  She is particular effective when she transforms herself into a childlike spirit and when telling her riveting story of her machinations to save Jewish Hungarians.

Elena Vannoni’s simple set of white upright panels allows Paul Deziel’s illuminating projections to do their work.  Molly Tiede’s lighting does its best to make even the most turgid stretches palatable.  Litha Ashforth’s incidental music also adds color to the text.

Talking with Angels: Budapest, 1943 (through March 30, 2025)

Theaterlab, 357 West 36^th Street, 3^rd Floor, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.Theaterlabnyc.com or http://www.Talkingwithangels.com

Running time: 100 minutes without an intermission