Review: Diivat

EXHILARATING AND COLOURFUL COMEDY

Colours and a colourful scenography cavalcade are the most noticeable elements in the Helsinki City Theatre’s premiere play Diivat. With the exception of the train scene at the beginning, the entire comedy takes place in the same living room-like space, similar to the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Hannu Lindholm has turned the stage into a spacious, sophisticated, prosperous hall with a densely green garden in the background. The colours of the stage image have been sharpened down to each individual palm tree, all the way to the background canvas.

Sari Salmela’s theatrical costumes aim for the same abundance of colours. The text of Ken Ludvig’s play refers to many of his earlier plays. The costumes, for their part, cover a wide range of plays and their styles.

The veteran cast includes a number of old veterans of comedy, such as Marjatta Raida and Esko Roine, not forgetting the director himself. The stage was a competition between the creators to see who could laugh the most. Everyone gathered laughs in their own way.

Santeri Kinnunen created the character the most with his whole body, emphasizing the condition of the priest Duncan with individual dance steps or strange body contortions. Kinnunen’s physics makes Duncan the most interesting character in this work.

Asko Sarkola , especially when playing the woman, relied on the basic expression of small gestures and a static silly face, which differed from the others, keeping the viewer in a frenzy of anticipation of what Stephanie, played by Sarkola’s Jack, would do next.

Divas as a whole are hilarious, but quite typical of pushing people to laugh. At regular intervals, giggles were heard from the stands. From the text of the play, it was easy to identify where to laugh. Of course, the fun is double-ensured when men dress up as women.

In the play, the coincidences were, like the traditional handsome, structurally insightful and thus successfully creating comicism. And nothing too surprising happened: The play progressed calmly and calmly from the initial laughs to the final gibberish.