Review: Viimeinen sikari

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Sex, lies and human longing

Tea Ista is the gem of the stage in Bengt Ahlfors’ The Last Cigar

Bengt Ahlfors: The Last Cigar. Helsinki City Theatre, small stage. Translated by Lasse Pöysti, directed by Bengt Ahlfors, set design by Erkki Salvesen, costumes by Sari Salmela, lighting by Juhani Leppänen, sound by Antero Mansikka, cast by Lasse Pöysti, Tea Ista, Mauri Heikkilä and Leenamari Unho.

It may be my fault, but it’s hard to imagine a situation where the fine Tea Ista would whip the handcuffed vicar of a small town, Mauri Heikkilä, in the church sacristy towards a sadomasochistic orgasm.
I won’t reveal much more about the plot, but that’s the kind of sex Bengt Ahlfors’ new play The Last Cigar is about, albeit an act somewhere else.
The comedy of scale, written for Lasse Pöysti, works at the level of its foreboding, yet surprising twists.
It works from the humour created by situations. Less apt is laughing at the elderly who are grieving for a lifeless life. And the audience laughed, laughed when we made laugh.
Be that as it may, the Helsinki City Theatre has found a golden egg in the content structure of its repertoire.

The population is also ageing in theatre auditoriums. It is increasingly difficult to identify with the problems of teenagers dripping with love pain, the Romeos and Juliets, but Tea Ista and Lasse Pöysti are nannas.
The Quartet on the small stage is sold out on the small stage of the City Theatre. The same fate seems to await The Last Cigar, starring Ista and Pöysti.
There was room for a few scattered seats for yesterday’s premiere and the next time only next January. The performance for this year is fully booked. Ticket sales for the 2005 performances will begin in September, according to the Helsinki City Theatre.

There are four people in The Last Cigar: a retired principal, a librarian wife who has left work, a parish priest of a small town, and a priest’s daughter who is about to divorce. For all of these, The Last Cigar seeks the right to their own life and all kinds of joys.
Of course, we viewers agree. The elderly also have the right to sex and love.

But the plot, sometimes with gunshots and deadly diseases, is absolutely impossible. And the structure?
The matter, i.e. the plot, is only tackled when the intermission arrives. There, the play brightens up into theatre and the spectator also cheers up, if there is anything left to cheer up after the initial half-hour long rants and marinades and other undramatic stuff.
Lasse Pöysti’s director, Bengt Ahlfors, occasionally places himself on the front stage to rant directly to the audience about the principal’s missed opportunities. Quite underlined, even though Pöysti plays his role with his familiar guaranteed qualities: warmth, self-irony and controlled outsiderness.

However, Tea Ista is a gem of interpretation, as long as her role is finally allowed to begin. He is unsurpassably precise in his observations, even when the play leaves the actor standing on the wall. She is cutting as a woman seeking her rights and a woman in particular, sensual and beautiful. He is the right person in the interpretation.
Mauri Heikkilä is also charming, but a bit wooden as a vicar when he extends his arms. Played by Leenamari Unho, the daughter contemplating divorce is a fresh and energetic person.
Erik Salvesen has staged the living room interior to make it inhabited and cozy. The dresses designed by Sari Salmela tell the story of their wearers and suit them.

In the pre-premiere screening, the audience liked what they saw. It didn’t matter if the theme of infidelity in the story just walked out the doors in the finale without a final treatment.
The actors’ skills and charisma were decisive. They are the best thing about The Last Cigar.