Review: Iloisiin kuulemiin ja näkemiin

WINDS OF CHANGE AT YLE

Studio Pasila’s new play Joyful Heard and Goodbye delights and delights as it follows the work of the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s fictional current affairs editorial team from the Olympic summer of 1952 to the present day. Audible excerpts from archive speeches, photographs and excellent journalist types make the winds of change tangible. The short scenes touches on, among other things, Armi Kuusela, the note crisis and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Villages are emptied and people are flowing to Sweden and the south. The old Yle tries to be overly impartial, until a conscious female journalist (Leena Rapola) arrives there as well, and the familiar role models start to squeak.

The most chilling phase comes at the end, when a young visionary (Antti Timonen) begins to train experienced journalists to be change-minded and innovative. Those who can’t keep up will end up on the hill. And soon the veterans confess their fall into resistance to change as if they were in a confessional.

It is precisely this psychological crap that comes from all corners these days, and visionaries hovering above the implementation of the work churn out their abracadabra for a good salary. Perhaps there will come a time when it will be listened to with as much wonder as some of the play’s archival speeches. It is difficult to see the oddities of his time.

The cavalcade of scenes in the play is occasionally interrupted by music. Many brilliant interpretations take you back to your own youth and student years. It’s amazing what kind of emotions familiar songs set in motion. The village road is quiet, the silver moon is shining, the chocolate heart is threatening to melt and you, you I love. Whose troops you stand with makes your own throat shiver and it’s almost five that I don’t get caught up in it.

A charming and slightly sad evening. We Finns love loss and giving up – at least in music.