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The Wall in the Mind

The Wall in the Mind is an Irish-produced audio drama set in Berlin before and after the fall of the Berlin wall. It centers around an Irish woman named Claire O’Hanlon and her adolescent boyfriend Emil who mysteriously reappeared after years of being missing. The main focus is Claire and her obsession with finding out the truth about Emil.

By far the best part of this audio drama was the dystopian tone from the pre-fall period of the Berlin wall. There was so much tension and realistic angst for the characters, it felt like I was experiencing the second Hunger Games film in audio form. The fact that it’s set in the real world past makes it all the more bleak.

The title is purposefully misleading. Throughout the story you get a sense that Claire might not be all there. She’s constantly making rash decisions when she arrives in modern day Berlin all because she is desperate for some closure.

The German and Irish accents can be hard to understand for an american audience, but you still get the general sense of what they’re saying despite not hearing all the words. The actors, specifically the male ones, sound similar enough to each other that you wonder who’s talking to whom. The cast is also a bit to large for the kind of story there telling, making it needlessly complex. The soundscape was created on location, which definitely added to the confusing nature of the dialogue and scenes. Audio drama may be a blind medium, but when the listener feels blind as to what’s going on, the immersion factor decreases.

My interest level waxed and waned constantly throughout listening. There are so many twists and turns and you’re sure the story will end a certain way. In fact the story practically confirmed my early suspicions during episode five. However by the end of the series, it’s not entirely clear why the scene was included as it raises more questions than it answers. Needless to say I fell for the misdirection, thinking Emil’s fate had to be part of some conspiracy. It’s almost like “Memento” in the way our primary focus is on one character. Everything we experience is filtered through the lens of Claire O’Hanlon.

Overall this six-part audio drama series is a great example of writer’s creating misdirection in their mysteries. Even if they didn’t quite nail the landing, it was still an impressive jump.

4/5 Stars

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