Review: Enoch Arden

The strength of poetry drama lies in internalised tones

Pami Karvonen and Oskari Katajisto will perform the poetry drama Enoch Arden, written in the 1860s.

In the abundant hustle and bustle of means and effects, it has already been forgotten that a theatre performance can take its audience in another way, without gestures and with internalised means. Such a rare case is the dialogue between Enoch Arde, an actor and a pianist, on the Elsa stage of the Helsinki City Theatre.
  The performance is extremely simple and ascetic when it comes to external effects. There is only room for the drama opened up by the words, the music of Richard Strauss and Oskari Katajisto, who tells the story without moving his hand and in the basic position.
  You can sense the search in everything. Accompanied poetry drama itself is already a rarity, and its author, Alfred Tennyson, who was once very well-known, seems to belong to the special knowledge of 19th-century English poetry students. As a theatrical expression, Pekka Laiho’s introspective approach is also the greatest search for an alternative.
  The drama itself and its colours, on the other hand, have not been compromised. The expressive, multi-directional love story breaks away from the rough performance in a pure and tonal way, continuing on an emotional level as Pami Karvonen’s convincing piano playing. After a short initial weaning, I noticed at the premiere that I was listening to the stages of the old poem without letting up, taking into account the themes of love, friendship and family it contained.
  Oskari Katajisto doesn’t really seem to be making his presentation more effective in any way. He just says. But the monologue is so polished, so studied in its tones, that its melancholic, harshly masculine character is conveyed vividly and touchingly.
  The actor’s appearance makes room for loneliness, orphanhood and uncompromising seriousness, which feels really good. Feelings of sadness, longing and tenderness emerge very expressively. But Oskari Katajisto is not yet a heavyweight manifestation of masculinity.
  The poem is actually a full-blown drama, a story about the life cycle of three people with its twists and turns. It accommodates the conflict between human will and inevitable fate, the familiar feeling of predestined unhappiness.
  The poem opens up dimensions to the qualitative questions of an individual’s life. It tells about choices where selflessness is more important than one’s own desires and life itself is a greater thing than the pleasures it offers.
  The story of Enoch Arden, the harsh story of three friends, one of whom is a girl, is a valuable mirror in its reflective wisdom, with its abandonment of decisions and impatience of this time.
  As the story progresses, the trio’s growth brings love, marital choices, and livelihood efforts into the picture. Enoch, who married a childhood friend, goes to sea after an accident has robbed him of his bread as a fisherman. The wife is left alone with the children, in increasing trouble even when nothing is heard from Enoch for years. It’s the turn of another friend.
  The beautiful, barren story is also a reminder of the importance of concise expression as a creator of verbal images.

  Enoch Arden
  Premiere on the Elsa stage of the Helsinki City Theatre 19.4.2001.
  Written by: Alfred Tennyson, translation: Jussi Törnwall, Pekka Laiho, music: Richard Strauss, director: Pekka Laiho, visualisation: Sari Salmela, narrator: Oskari Katajisto, pianist: Pami Karvonen.