Review: Pudotuspeli

LILLA HAS EVERYTHING AT STAKE

Jordi Galceranin’s play about the turmoil of working life is now also available in Finnish

Catalan Jordi Galceran’s play stars in Grönholm’s method, an aptitude test developed by a fictional Swedish psychologist to select new employees.

Grönholm’s Method, which was performed in Swedish at Lilla Teatern for the first half of the year, has been given the name Dropout Game in order to avoid confusion.
The four candidates for the position of director in the furniture company’s branch office are locked in a meeting room, where the aptitude test assignments are forwarded through a mailbox on the wall.

It is not only the methods by which job seekers are tested that are unbelievable and cruel. So are the qualities that are required of them. There is always someone to choose, but what justifies the means and how far can we go in the demands?


The Finnish audience has internalized the spirit of the game, as evidenced by the storm of laughter that repeatedly sweeps the stands.

Translator Anu Partanen has skilfully translated the play into Finnish. The actors’ speech does not interfere with national peculiarities in one direction or another, and thus does not offer the viewer the opportunity to believe that all this is not happening here and now.

The focus of the play is on tensions, which are caused not only by unpredictable test methods and invisible evaluators, but also by the relationships between the test subjects as the play progresses. What are they covering up and what do they expect the employer to want to see?

The Swedish-language performance period has further increased the actors’ confidence in a text full of sudden twists and turns, and changing the language has not caused any difficulties for any of them. The work of Jonna Järnefelt, Carl-Kristian Rundman, Sampo Sarkolaand Pekka Strang can be followed with faith, hope and doubt in their chests.

Still, let’s keep it a secret how the race will turn out. And the end result is not important in itself, after all, they are not trying to join our company.