I felt like giving a hug.

When theatre succeeds, you forget you're sitting in an auditorium, and this happens from the first line to the last applause in Anna Breaks. With a good balance between seriousness and humour, this becomes a theatre experience that is both engaging and touching.

By Edvard Pedersen

"Anna breaks" is a sad, realistic, but funny theater performance, where we get to experience actress Anna Ladegaard's upbringing with an alcoholic mother. This performance was created by Anna Ladegaard in collaboration with Det andre teatret, and she has been performing with this performance for a year. Anna's goal is to have the main role in her own life. 

The program states that "Anna breaks" is a performance for young people from 16 years of age and up. I don't think that's entirely appropriate. Even though alcoholism is a sensitive topic for some, I think the message Anna brings is very important. This performance is so gentle and funny that children under 16 years of age will not be harmed by it. I think this performance is suitable for all children in junior high school and up. 

I myself was sitting in the front row, smoke from the smoke machine was almost all the way up my face, the lights were completely synchronized with Anna's emotions. When she was calm, the lights were dim and quiet, while when she was angry it was strong and powerful, as if her emotions had flown out into the audience. For much of the performance, Anna sat on a chair on stage and was calm. She narrated and spoke in a soft way, so that everyone could understand. She wanted everyone to understand. It was as if I was feeling what she was feeling.

Suddenly we were sitting there and Anna was talking about how angry and sad she was that her mother was the way she was, and then she started crying. I thought, what's going on now? Is she acting now, or is this real? The whole hall was silent. I sat there and felt a tear coming, all I wanted to do was give Anna a hug.

What impressed me during this performance was how Anna used her emotions and the stage to tell her story, and how she used comedy to make it easier to understand. She made me feel like I was there, with her, with her mother. This was sad, but it made it easy for me to empathize more with the story. She showed that this performance has been both thought out and completed several times. She told things as if it were from a child's point of view in the present, that it was as if the child inside her was still there when she told this story. Anna had a deep understanding of what she had gone through as a child with an alcoholic mother. This made her tell her story really properly and realistically. These were real emotions.