Sunsets and Roses

Shocking family secrets come to light in newly liberated East Berlin. A sequel to City of Ashes.

At Christmas 1989, Lotte’s daughter, Ilse, arrives in East Berlin for the first time since she and her late mother escaped to Wales in 1948. Haunted by secrets of her mother’s past which her Welsh father, Owen, refuses to reveal, she tracks down her mother’s roommate, Lili, now happily married to Micha, a Russian soldier who stayed on after the war. Ilse soon learns the disturbing truth about the mass rapes of 1945, her parents’ wartime love affair, and the uncertainty of who her biological father was. The answers, while not what she expected, nevertheless set her free, and she returns to Owen, sweetly wrapped in the comfort of love and forgiveness.

HISTORY: Sunsets and Roses was written in 2019 and perhaps will be performed by the Opéra de Poche in 2023.