Review: Geneve

Pasi Lampela’s Geneva chills a hitherto unspoken subject in a new Finnish play

THE LONG SCARS OF THE CASINO ERA

Geneva hurts even if you don’t hit your spot. It hit so many people.
Well, huh huh. There is laughter in the gorge, but no one has fun. Not killed, but still killed.
Those people on that stage, at this night out, are, to put it in modern language, completely broken and in the yard.
They express themselves poorly, because there are swear words for both emotions and adjectives.
Your ears are crackling, but you shouldn’t get caught up in it. Studio Elsa, an excellent venue for the 100-year-old Helsinki City Theatre’s chamber plays, is witnessing a rare new play this autumn.

Pasi Lampela wrote and directed Geneva, the first Finnish play about the casino years at the turn of the 80s and 90s, the Great Collapse and their effects on the lives of a few people.


Are they really 17 years old?

It is all the more harrowing to watch when you know that many people still carry the burden of debt and shame from those years on their shoulders and inside.

We are in Geneva today. Where did the years go? Has it been 17 years since the turn of the decade during the Great Bubble?
Elsa’s stage is the living room of Rotko’s house in the upscale Geneva area. That’s the only great thing about this play that digs under the skin.
The father of the family, Henrik Rotko (Carl-Kristian Rundman), has just received an acquittal in the legal process. His wife Anna (Merja Larivaara) wrings her arms. Daughter Marianne (Pihla Penttinen) also twists other parts of her body, which is no longer surprising at all as the play progresses.
Henrik’s former guru and collaborator Jaakko Halme (Pekka Laiho) also unexpectedly arrives at the party. His arrival shocks both Henrik and Anna, albeit for slightly different reasons.


Stinging like peeling an onion

Layer after layer peels off during the evening. And in the end, this is not going through the worst economic crisis of all time in Finland, but the knots and messes it has caused in the lives of a few individuals.
The overly positive wife (Ursula Salo) and the official-like husband (Eppu Salminen) of a couple of friends also carry their secrets inside. They crack as the evening progresses, and it’s not pretty to look at. Still, it is believable.


Merja Larivaara is chillingly good

The entire ensemble of half a dozen sounds like a finely tuned band. I watch and am shocked – yet I enjoy it. Rundman and Laiho compete on an equal footing, they are brilliantly both charming and monsters. Eppu Salminen holds back his emotions almost until the end.
Merja Larivaara, who returns to the stage after a long break, shows that the mother’s anxiety and the emptiness of her wife’s life are chilling well. The tragedy is increased by the fact that Anna is not quite clean herself.


There will be no cleaning

How will life continue in Geneva after this tearing night out?
Badly, of course. Even though there is no purification, the viewer still goes through such strong emotions during the evening that the end is some kind of relief.
More of these plays, Pasi Lampela!