Review: Isät ja pojat
A FINELY FLOWING RUSSIAN CLASSIC
On the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, the infallibility of Russian realism is once again proven. Ivan Turgenev’s The Story of Fathers and Sons (1862) fascinated the Northern Irish writer Brian Friel, who based the novel on the novel and wrote a play of the same name that premiered in London in 1987. This version, translated and directed by Kari Heiskanen , has been given an inexorably Russian form. All the action is framed by both an unexpected melancholy and a pre-Itsehovian longing for the old, which is struck by a new and bold sociality.
Defiant youth strive for change
The interiors created by set designer Hannu Lindholm tell of the restrained charm of the Russian aristocracy, which is slightly vibrated by a tolerant double standard. Like poison, this garden is invaded by the defiant, nihilistic youth of the mid-1800s. It tries to change the world, but it has to bend towards its starting point: even the most defiant bird does not fly far from its home nest. Even an extreme radical must respect unbroken values, even if they put everything else to pieces.
The unfailing brothers Kari and Ilkka Heiskanen play the Kirsanov brothers, landed nobles. Nikolai is busy with secondary things and his “bird roast” does not fly far. Pavel, on the other hand, leads a frustrated life, but inside is simmering. He challenges Jevgeni Bazarov (Kari-Pekka Toivonen) to a duel, but the real goal is his own lost youth and unerupted radicalism. Pavel can’t bear to look at the most authentic embodiment of the idea, the young Yevgeny. Pavel disguises his shot as love jealousy, although it is probably more youthful jealousy. The scene is built extremely well in all its elements.
The young generation of Kirsanov, Arkadi, interpreted by Sami Hokkanen , has joined the ranks of the nihilists, but his faith in progress is shaken. For Arkady, nihilism is part of the rite of passage to adulthood, despite other kinds of assurances. At the same time, it can be used as an excursion to the lower class. Hokkanen’s consistently performed Arcade is not enough to break its roots, let alone the whole of Russia. Yevgeny Bazarov, a medical candidate, comes from a middle-class civil service background, and for that reason alone he is a suitable hero of the revolution. His boisterous behavior is aptly suggestive and believable even as a caricature.
But even the defiant Yevgeny can’t do anything when the young widow Anna Odintsova (Minna Suuronen) tames him. The motherliness of Anna, interpreted by Suuronen , is distant but unshakable. There is no Yevgeny who would stay cold to him. The wild folk girl Dunjasha (Ursula Salo) does not get love from Jevgeni, even though she should. In the reality of the story, the farmhand still marries the maid.
The Infertile Father-Son Relationship
The relationship between father and son Bazarov is unproductive, downright barren, unlike father and son Kirsanov, who receive life more generously and softly. The stage vibrates with these Russian male characters and their apt interpretation.
Mika Ijäs’s lighting is built up of fast and sliding atmospheres so beautifully that the visuals of it and the set are worth seeing.
Delays are part of the tradition of the Russian classic, but at least this version of Fathers and Sons does not succumb to idle shuffling, but lives on as joyful screams of country girls, dance, music, the joy of meeting and suddenly cutting, pale encounters, passing by. The flowers are trampled on as if they were an omen of death.
An intact whole
The drama adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons is a full-scale drama that also reaches Russian customs with subtle references. We feel it and yet we see it as outsiders. Perhaps this is the secret that gives this play its touch like Yevgeny’s plastic, circular magic movement.
Fathers and Sons is an intact whole and controlled traditional theatre. However, a few individual words sound a bit strange in their context: a Russian does not “sing” a “hymn” in front of his icon. In any case, the incomparable programme is worth acquiring to support the experience and to recap history.
Fathers and Sons tells the arc of manhood. Each generation wants to turn the wheel of the world according to its own pace and then calms down. A few people are always left with the fire of an idea that produces something new. Yevgeny is a hero, not entirely virtuous, but even in his childishness, the most morally enduring man in the story. – And there is always a need for a lonely woman somewhere.