Review: Väärennetty morsian
HILARIOUS THOSE FINNISH CHINESE
I guess this is also a kind of China phenomenon: a play has been created on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre in which “District Judge Qiao solves the case of meddled mandarin ducks”. I still don’t understand what the mandarin ducks have to do with the play The Fake Bride, but it’s a pretty hilarious thing anyway.
The script of the play is written by Sami Keski-Vähälä based on Chinese folklore, directed by Chinese Kong Xinyuan. The production is thus a mixture of Finland and China: the visual identity is built in the Far East, but the stage speech is sprinkled with a lot of traditional Finnish bush comedy.
Compared to the Finnish contemporary drama The Fake Bride is like from another planet. The programme mentions that Chinese theatre is based on the idea that “if it is real, it is not art” – I guess the exact opposite could be said about Finnish theatre.
The story is an honest soap opera and reminds me of some of Shakespeare’s comedies, at least in the sense that this story is also full of cunning scam attempts and men in women’s clothes.
Of course, love is central: young people’s crushes do not want to coincide with the marriage contracts made by their parents. We need the services of a marrying Zhang, and eventually a little bit of a judge as well.
In the work of the skirt people
The Fake Bride puts the phenomenal Risto Kaskillahti in the spotlight, who some may remember as Miss Pässi from the same theatre’s Katto-Kassinen. Kaskilahti is well on its way to becoming Finland’s leading comedian.
By consistently exaggerating, Kaskilahti builds a language of his own for the marrying Zhang, which is built up of repetitive lines, details that emphasize the weakness of character and a seemingly polite grumbling that is stretched or shortened according to the character’s moods and situation.
From a Lahti perspective, Tuukka Leppänen’s first major role at the Helsinki City Theatre is interesting. Tiirismaa’s music class graduate, who is currently studying at the Theatre Academy, is Jaspis, the son of the widow Sun, who also ends up in a woman’s clothes before “the one” is found. In his cheerful interpretation, Leppänen comfortably retains the appearance of a confused young man.
Eija Vilpas and Eeva-Liisa Haimelin are the strong women in the story, the widow Sun and Mrs. Ping, who actually run the entire love circus with their intrigues.
Tongue in cheek
Although Kong Xinyuan’s direction loses some of its intensity in the second half of the play, The Fake Bride as a whole is a successful stylistic experiment. Along with the tongue-in-cheek roles, it derives much of its charm from Zhang Yi’s gorgeous costumes with no sparing silk. In addition to glitter, the visual identity contains a lot of symbolism of traditional Chinese theatre, which is successfully explored by the play’s rich script.
During the intermission, some of the audience seemed to be a little worried about how the Chinese themselves would react to such a parody of their own tradition. It’s hard to say. On the other hand, it is part of genuine cultural exchange that people sometimes dare to photograph a friend in other ways than with extremely serious respect.