Review: Matkalla Porkkalaan
MURDER IN LAUTTASAARI!
Yes, in the last century
The City Theatre’s Journey to Porkkala is a visually handsome and lively performance
Helsinki during the Interim Peace is shattered like a Stalker’s landscape.
There is a fight over sugar cubes and substitute coffee, but at the same time, the privileged members of the Control Commission staying at Hotel Torni are drinking coffee with cognac and eating pastries.
The City Theatre’s small stage opens up to the aftermath of 1944 in its visually handsome and sense-blowing play On the Way to Porkkala. However, Porkkala is only a carrot in the name.
Maija Pekkanen’s exquisite costumes depicting the epoch and Katariina Kirjavainen’s spectacularly multifaceted set design create a porous and vivid landscape in the performance, both literally and on the level of images.
The visual solutions of the performance carry the evening.
The story itself is a more confusing combination of a suspense drama, an unsolved murder mystery and the greater political intrigue of the time.
Fortunately, director Milko Lehto’s approach to his material is as dynamic as possible.
So what happened in Lauttasaari on a November night in 1944, when a Russian military column was on its way to Porkkala? Why was Captain Ivan Belov , who was lying in the last horse-drawn carriage, shot?
The incident, which had charred the Finnish government and fuelled hysteria over the threat of occupation by the Soviet Union, was quickly compared to the shots fired at Mainila. That is why it is – still – the most investigated murder in Finland. The culprit is being sought.
Sami Keski-Vähälä has written a play on a tricky topic. But when you start to look at the case more closely, it turns out that the murder was not a provocation, not a political one, and conspiracy theories have also been dismissed. The drama disappears from the pedestal.
The remaining theory is a murder committed by a Finnish warrior in his drunken head, a completely ordinarily banal crime.
He analyzed it in his book Who Shot Captain Ivan Belov? Risto Niku with excellent precision and convincingness, whose conclusions also seem quite logical. He has a theory about the murderer.
Drama needs a bigger story. Keski-Vähälä stretches and waddles it into personal relationships, jealousy drama or various female agents’ love affairs. The content doesn’t improve much from that.
On the other hand, the Soviet Union’s way of commanding the Finnish government under Belov’s pretext is the blood and flesh of the stage. It’s a shame that the director lets it slip into parody.
General fear is bubbling in the air when the chairman of the Control Commission with a Stalin moustache, Zhdanov, humiliates the Finns as a jovial interpretation of Antti Litja .
The play intensifies, but again grabs hold of the flower stems as it begins to endlessly speculate about guilt.
The character direction works brilliantly in raising and deepening the relationship between Ilkka Heiskanen’s suspected officer and the Valpo investigator, played by Santeri Kinnunen , to the many levels of humanity.
The director also develops vivid and dynamic crowd scenes for the stage, as well as sharp, rhythmically striking transitions from one situation to another.
There is a large number of great actors on stage, charged with precise work, but also a large number of departures for other stories. A lot would have been gained by centralizing, even though it is an interesting and curious play even now.
The thriller is never solved. An “educated guess” is left in the air, i.e. a rather lame conclusion to the drama. It is worth reading Niku’s book, which tells the ending.