Review: Veljeni Leijonamieli

“I cried alternately with joy and sadness” Mei, 8, went to see the play My Brother in the Lion’s Heart and was impressed by both the actors and the lighting.

My family and I have listened to Astrid Lindgren’s book Veljeni Leijonamieli as an audiobook. Now we went to see a play about it.

I liked the play because the main characters of the story, the Lionmind brothers, are really brave and defend each other fiercely. The story was quite similar to the book, but at the end, when the brothers encountered the dragon Katla, it happened a little differently in the book.

The performance was also quite sad, and I cried alternately with joy and sadness. The ending was also happy, as the brothers were always able to be together.

I think the actors were really good at empathizing with the story and it really felt like I was there when things happened.

The costumes were good, except for the soldiers. The soldiers were puppets played by actors, and they looked a bit strange when some of them had two heads. However, I wouldn’t have been able to make them better myself, so it was quite inventive.

The music was a bit wistful, but it suited the performance. The lights were also very well designed, because they always hit where they were supposed to.

I don’t think there was anything very scary about the performance, but I would recommend it to children aged nine to eleven and older. I hope there will be more performances of it, because it was really good. I don’t think there was anything bad about the performance. That’s why I gave it a full five stars.

Read the original review here.