Review: Manillaköysi

BROKEN MANILA ROPE ON STAGE

It took a long time before Veijo Meri’s Manilla Rope found its way to the stage. The book has been a staple of Finnish reading and has ended up under the magnifying glass of many literary scholars.

Manilla Rope is the first modernist work on war in Finnish literature. Lauri Sipari has tackled this among other things in his dramatisation and jumped from the original text to an outside observer of literature. He has used texts on Meri’s own authorship and contemporary literature alongside the source text.
The story of Joose Keppilä is not seen on stage, but his painful tug-of-war sinks into a subplot among other stories set on the battlefield.
The fragmented story blows strongly in a comic direction – so much so that at times its purpose is questioned. In the midst of intestines and half-shot heads, the moaning crowd even feels macabre.
But, the audience liked what they saw. On the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, people laughed at the jokes and silly movements.

External text observation

Petteri Sallinen’s direction is intransigent and dives briskly from one scene to the next. The positions vary from the front to the train and from the train to the literary circles.

Hannu Lindholm’s set design is extremely simplistic: there is only a stretch of railway and a grassy slope behind it. Everything unnecessary has been stripped away and space has been made for text.

Veijo Meri’s writing process and its reflections are one of the elements on stage. Väinö Linna’s The Unknown Soldier dives into the mycelium of the Manilla Rope through his characters.
Metatext is carried across the board: even the performance itself and the chosen dramaturgical solutions are tackled.
On the other hand, what brings added value to the presentation in quick cuts and delicious remarks in the metatext breaks the integrity of the plot so much that it is difficult to find a common thread.
War with all its horrors is of course in the center, but it is viewed through stories that have already been reinterpreted.
The acting is excellent. Jari Pehkonen is the main entertainer through his many roles, and he can be comical.

Pekka Huotari Joose Keppilä walks almost speechless next to the soldiers played by Aarno Sulkanen, Jyrki Nousiainen, Matti Rasila, Teemu Mustonen, Hannes Suominen and Sanna Majuri , but his facial expressions tell us how he feels and where he feels.