Review: Hissvägraren

FINE-TUNED ABOUT LONELINESS

Lasse Pöysti shines in a thought-provoking one-man show

Sometimes you can read in the newspapers about some mummified corpse that was found months or years after some loner died, alone and missing by no one. Almost every two weeks, someone is buried in Helsinki at the expense of the city, without relatives or friends. And contrary to what you might think, loneliness has not always been voluntary.
In Bengt Ahlfors’ new play “The Elevator Objector“, the audience meets a man who is so lonely that he talks more to the building’s elevator than to any living soul. He is not a loner, it has just happened that way.

He has never been able to get married or have children, his friends from school have died or dispersed in the wind, his co-workers have disappeared with retirement, his dog has been run over and he has promised never to get a new one. But then, after sixteen long years alone, he meets a stripping newspaper deliverer…
The warm-hearted and delicate story is a kind of fairy tale for adults. It has many ingredients in common with Barbro Lindgren’s fine children’s story “The Tale of the Little Uncle“, which was staged at Wasa Theatre a few years ago.
“The Elevator Refused” is Lasse Pöysti’s one-man show, the role is written exclusively for him and he tells the story that no one else can.
With the right of age, he takes a little support from the script from time to time – Pöysti is 80 years old and will participate in the upcoming season in no less than three different productions, so you can’t exactly say that he is resting on his laurels and celebrating a quiet retirement life. Quite the opposite, since he is on stage every other night. To the happiness of the audience.

Lasse Pöysti and Bengt Ahlfors can celebrate with the play “The Elevator Refused” at Lilla Teatern that it is exactly forty years since they first collaborated – also then at Lilla Teatern, with Brecht and Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera“. The production was directed by Bengt Ahlfors and Lasse Pöysti played the role of Peachum.
This was followed by a few years of intensive collaboration, which ended with Lasse Pöysti’s legendary portrayal of an elephant in Bengt Ahlfors’ production of “Around the World in 80 Days” in 1970.

It was not until thirty years later that they resumed their collaboration when Lasse Pöysti appeared in Bengt Ahlfors’ plays “The Illusionists” in 2000 and “The Last Cigar” in 2004 at the Helsinki City Theatre. That collaboration gave us a taste for more and the result can now be enjoyed at Lilla Teatern.
“The Elevator Refused” is a thought-provoking play that is warmly recommended – we all get old sooner or later, but even today we can make an effort for someone who is old and lonely.