According to a cliche Finns don't talk. True enough anywhere else but not on stage. Why do Finnish playwrights make their characters talk so much? Perhaps the cliche should be turned around to: Finns don't listen. That is why everyone is busy with a monologue, and with far too many monologues running parallel, each must outshout one's neighbor, not to be heard, but simply to be able to hear one's own voice.
Ten years ago young Finnish playwrights wrote about the growing pains of childhood. It was endearing, even though the basic structure then too was a rivalry of monologues. Now that the characters are no longer children but thirty somethings, their endless self-justification and self-therapy appear rather embarrassing.
This paragraph is a selection of themes in new Finnish plays of 2012: parents reminisce their children who were killed in a car accident on 9/11; sisters return to their childhood home to share the non-existing heirlooms before their mother is even dead; a young woman has to stay in her home town to look after her grandmother; a young boy remembers his stepfather who was cruel when drunk; a charismatic but unstable preacher manipulates his congregation; an old couple drives to their summer house to commit joint suicide; bureaucrats try to build a temple when Jesus appears and confuses everything; a young woman interviews her grandfather about what the Soviet Union really was like.
To summarize and generalize, they are family plays from the point of view of the middle generation.
2012 was not a good year in Finnish theatre. The following three productions stand out because of their directorial inventiveness and originality.
The burial of Ophelia (Anna-Maija Tuokko): Hamlet (Eero Aho) is under attack by Laertes (Tommi Rantamäki) in Kari Heiskanen's production of HAMLET at Helsinki City Theatre. Photo courtesy: Stefan Bremer
In Kari Heiskanen's two-and-half hour HAMLET at the Helsinki City Theatre, the actors do not strike a pose to utter eloquent Shakespearean lines, but they speak of necessity. It is their physical activity that forces words out of these mafia men.
The dinner table of THE PATRIARCH. The big screen reveals rifts in the amiable atmosphere: daughter-in-law (Kristiina Halttu, left) and wife (Kirsti Wallasvaara). Photo courtesy: Stefan Bremer
In THE PATRIARCH, written and directed by Juha Jokela for the National Theatre, a retired couple returns from France and invites their entire family to dinner for the first half, but when unity is broken with disputes, after the intermission, they meet in twos or threes only to scatter away as fast as possible. Live video catches details from the dinner table on a big screen.
THE AMERICAN GIRL at Takomo Theatre. Girls come to terms with their smalltown origin, which on stage is a miniature set. Actresses from left Niina Koponen, Karoliina Niskanen, Essi Hellén (front), Iida-Maria Heinonen and Emmi Parviainen. Photo Courtesy: Heta Saukkonen
In THE AMERICAN GIRL, dramatized by Iida Hämeen-Anttila from Monika Fagerholm's novel, and directed by Essi Räisänen for Takomo Theatre, two teenage girls act out time and again a local murder case from years ago. The all-female cast rips off and eats pages from the novel as they proceed. The repetition builds a mythology of their own, i.e. they come to grips with their home town and their sex, and this helps one of the girls to grow up and not commit suicide the way her friend does.
Matti Linnavuori edits the Performance Reviews Section for the IATC (International Association of Theatre Critics) webjournal Critical Stages. He is a freelance theatre critic for Finnish newspaper Satakunnan Kansa. He has also written and directed radio plays for YLE Finnish Broadcasting Company.
