Budapest 1943: Talking with Angels is not a metaphor. It is the story of four unassuming young artists' search for meaning and survival amidst the chaos of Nazi occupied Hungary. Somehow they found transcendence in the face of tragedy. Taken directly from their diaries, their remarkable philosophical conversations come to life in this luminous tour de force performed by Shelley Mitchell.

The drama unfolds around Gitta Mallasz's courageous attempt to save her three Jewish friends, Hanna Dallos, Lili Strauss, Josef Kreutzer and over 100 women and children from deportation by sheltering them in a slave labor factory. As commander in charge she was successful in saving almost everyone.

Hanna Dallos, Gitta's childhood friend, was the conduit for the angels' message of personal responsibility and self-awareness. Gitta, Hanna, Lili and Joseph all kept detailed diaries of the poetic and highly personal dialogues they experienced over a period of seventeen months from June 1943 until their deportation in December 1944.

Gitta Mallasz survived the war and in 1960 smuggled their precious diaries into France. The dialogues were made public in 1976 as Dialogue avec L’Ange and immediately became a bestseller, but the the book in its original language (Az Angyal Vàlaszol) was banned by the Communist régime in Hungary until 1991.

The play is based on their original transcripts and brings the experience of Talking with Angels to the 21st century.