Review: Pudotuspeli

WANTED FOR SERVICE: NICE ASSHOLE

Lillan’s Playoffs is a great comedy about modern job search


The beginning is strangely reminiscent of Nelonen’s favorite series Lost. There is a group
strangers to each other who have ended up in a strange
environment. In order to survive, you have to start finding out about other
motives.

However, we are not on a desert island now, but in the hands of a multinational furniture company
In Dekia’s meeting room. Four job seekers who have gone through a rigorous screening
arrives at the final stage of the recruitment interview. Of course, there are places
only one available.

It soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary interview –
The interviewers are nowhere to be seen. There is only a hatch in the wall, from which
The most imaginative tasks appear for the applicants. Everything feels like
but who is really running this thing? And maybe
Is everything not what it seems at first?

This is a short description of the Playoffs, Catalan writer Jordi
Galceran’s hit comedy. Premiered in Barcelona in 2003,
The universal appeal of the play is indicated by the fact that it has been seen
before Finland in seven countries and will see you in the near future
at least as many.

Galceran has earned its worldwide success. The playoffs are dynamite,
Steely drama from start to finish. This was also shown by the Lilla Teatern
The premiere audience awarded the play for its Finnish premiere
with quite a storm of applause from the author who had arrived.

The thriller background can be seen
In addition to comedies, Jordi Galceran has also written horror in the past.
The author’s background in thrillers is clearly visible in the dramaturgy of the performance, which
reminds me of Hitchcock’s Rear Window: tension builds up in a closed space
One piece at a time, from small details to larger entities.
Each mission reveals something new about the characters and the situation, hook
Follow the hook. In this way, the play keeps the audience firmly in its grip
until a surprising conclusion.

Although The Playoffs is first and foremost a comedy that makes us laugh
values of our time, to take it as a closed space and the employer’s
facelessness is also carried through a global
the arbitrariness of the market economy.

Above all, the question arises about the rules of the workplace: what
Does the employer have the right to know about its employees? Is latent depression
Your own business, even though it can be assumed that it will cost the company in the future
tens of thousands of euros?

In the “Grönholm Method” (the original title of the play), the line between the private and the
between the general is not really even relevant anymore, because if you want to,
However, the employer learns everything. More important than human authenticity
is to convey suitable images. Like one of the characters in the play
says, Dekia wants “an asshole who seems nice”. After all, it’s just
A threat, isn’t it?

Refined roles
The play’s cavalcade of characters is a successful cross-section of our time
stereotypes. There is a tough engineer (Pekka Strang), strange
chattering shopkeeper (Carl-Kristian Rundman), kitchen psychology
a hobbyist humanist (Sampo Sarkola) and a self-hardening
businesswoman (Jonna Järnefelt).

The foursome’s acting is pleasantly balanced. Edges of interpretation
have been polished into place, as the same group has performed a play
In Lillan in Swedish from January. But who from Grönholm’s method
Finally emerges victorious? Is it a real strength to recognize
weaknesses? Or do you do better in modern business
the type of person who builds an impenetrable
protective armor? They told me not to tell, so I won’t tell. Go and see
myself.