Review: Aurinko ja minä

There is no hint of diva in the role of a diva

The play about Sarah Bernhardt serves as an equal role-play between two actors

In her role as Sarah Bernhardt, Kyllikki Forssell is not the Great Diva or even on the Big Stage, which is the title of her recent memoir. He is the unquenchable star of the theatre stage, who does not need to underline his own greatness. The audience has learned to give him a standing ovation.

Kyllikki believes in Forssel when she, in the role of the biggest of the divas, says that she loves the storm. Nor is it difficult for Bernhardt to mention that he has served people from the stage for 55 years, after all, Forssell’s theatrical career has lasted even longer. The most effortless is the actress’s line: Today I’m going to surprise everyone!

Forssell is acting extremely freshly. The methods themselves are familiar, but there is no point in grumbling about any need for renewal in the presence of the actress.

Forssell’s laid-back attitude and direct contact with his co-star ensure that John Murrell’s play The Sun and Me will not become any “museum stuff” despite its theatrical historical theme.

Kyllikki Forssell plays the wooden leg walk that is precisely part of the character (Sarah Bernhardt had one leg amputated), otherwise the interpretation is airy. The tragedy of life is not crystallized in Bernhardt’s character, Forssell throws it into a universal human feeling that ripples in the air and is easy to share with the audience.

The Sun is involved in the implementation, especially in Forssell’s case. The whole could be described as a comedy with a sunset tone

Milko Lehto’s direction has contributed to smoothing out the dark depths of the play. The finishing touches are the responsibility of Elina Kolehmainen’s earthy, albeit unnecessarily plastic, set.

One of the key elements of the play is completely missing from the stage. Bernhardt’s wheelchair, to which he was probably pretty much tied at the time of the play – in 1922, the penultimate year of his life.

At the City Theatre, there is a dancing theatre play in which the diva tries to find herself and the secretary who is her assistant tries to free herself from herself.

Writing a sequel to Bernhardt’s memoirs remains a kind of excuse between the two. There is no real drama in the assignment. The director would have liked to have developed his solution more consciously in order to deepen the character portrayals of the characters.

In Forssell’s case , it is easy for the audience to laugh freely when Bernhardt plans to accept the role sent to him by the young writer, if the author only agrees to change the character’s age to a younger one. In Bernhardt’s situation, the idea is touching, Forssell can already be seen in the role in question.

Santeri Kinnunen, who is well over half the age of his co-star, is not of reminiscence age for a long time, but he also carries a long line of his previous roles with him to the stage. Kinnunen has played so many original marginal characters that his casting could be quickly revised. Kinnunen does his job very well, but hopefully Georges Pitou will go down in the annals as the culmination of one sport.

The performance has its merit as the gentle play of Forssell and Kinnunen. Considering the whole, the productisation tastes so strong in this City Theatre performance as well that the director would have hoped that his interpretation would have ended up with almost opposite solutions.