Review: Hissvägraren

THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR OF MEMORY SOMETIMES HAS TRAGICOMIC EDGES

In the ballad Eleanor Rigby , The Beatles ask themselves where all these things come from
All the lonely people, where do they come from
all come from?)
On the stage of Lilla Teatern, there is at least one of them. It is a
superb 80-year-old Lasse Pöysti , who in Bengt Ahlfors’ monologue The Elevator Refuser
looks back on his life in a series of anecdotal stories, in which my
in the laughter I are forced to swallow several lumps that insist on getting stuck in the
neck.


Staging

The monologue has autobiographical interfaces with Bebbe Ahlfors’ own life
and is written and directed for Lasse Pöysti.
The announcement already shows how an old rink excavation like Ahlfors is done.
When Lasse Pöysti enters the stage, he has the script in his hand. Thereafter,
creates an immediate and permanent contact with the audience through a
direct address. The feat of letting Pöysti play several times during
the course of the monologue “get off” and scroll to the right place in the
text, also forms an illusion of forgetfulness, of course combined with
with a benevolent understanding and forgiveness from the audience. It may
one-man show to stand on a solid foundation.


Frame with contrasts


The Elevator Refuses is the lonely old man’s story about his life in the
Helsinki, a life that on the surface could be characterized as meager and
gray. He never married, he had a total of two monotonous
work, the dog was his only friend and he walked alone on the
paths.
But the melancholy frame story has some necessary contrasts. On the one hand,
Lasse Pöysti’s character is basically the positive affirmer of life, the one who
sees the light rather than the shadows. On the one hand, life has made him a
good-natured but strange Kuf, who, like many other lonely people,
created his own rules and rituals, such as his lifelong worship of
Grace Kelly , who happened to be born on the same day as him.


Mirrored

His strangest peculiarity, however, is the dialogues with the elevator Enoch in his
dwelling houses. The name came about when the old man as a little parvel came to read
Kone nameplate facing backwards in the elevator mirror.
Much later, after the doctor’s advice to exercise more, he becomes too
for a short time refuse to lift the elevator, but quickly develops intricate rules for when
And how he is still allowed to use the elevator, rules that he also cheats with
and thumbs up at their own discretion.
Several other comic elements of the monologue have a great recognizable factor and
is about, among other things, slipping into funerals and funerals
– “At weddings, the catering is better than at funerals, at
funerals, on the other hand, better speeches are given.”
But under the laughter, more or less pent-up undercurrents are bubbling of
sadness and melancholy. They are not just based on some direct Jonas Gardellika
childhood traumas, but also in shortcomings and failures
attempts to contact people later in life.
What the text in The Elevator Refuser sometimes loses out on by periodically
be too long and drawn-out, Lasse Pöysti remedies that with a
performance where every facial expression, tone of voice, gesture and pause is the
Superb master’s. It is not wrong to say that Lasse Pöysti in
The elevator refuses demonstrates what great acting means.
And even though the target group is aimed at middle-aged upwards, it is
of course, the elderly who primarily recognize themselves in the elevator’s
warm, humane, yet slightly distorted reflection.