As an actor, director and producer she understands the basics of what makes a play work. Their sense of alienation as they fail to assimilate in their new home, Buenos Aires, is palpable. The Magic Fire , an allusion to Wagnerian opera, begins with a monologue from Lise, a grown woman or, one surmises, the playwright looking back from the vantage point of adulthood to her life as a child in Argentina. But young Lise is precocious, she asks questions, and what she often gets in return is evasions for this cadre of adults has put on the blinders. They concentrate very hard, focussing on what they find beautiful while shutting out that which they abhor.
Culture is what they cling to but alienation is what they feel.
The father, who must deal with the realities of what is taking place outside the cosseted life other family members lead, does not share his angst with them. Instead, he makes arrangements for all of them to emigrate once again. One can empathize with this family's plight in 1952, in Buenos Aires. And yet this family cannot avoid either, since their fate was and is determined by both. It cannot be trusted.