Review: Täydellinen persikka

LIGHTLY BITE INTO A PEACH

When the Hungarian Ferenc Molnár’s (1878–1952) play Liliom premiered at the Helsinki City Theatre in 2004, its atmosphere was filled with stuffy pipes. Ilo was in the background as carousel music.
The same author is the author of The Perfect Peach, which has now premiered at the same theatre.
There is no sign of gloom, at least not in terms of the setting. The glorious castle and its servants get to witness a chain of events fueled by misunderstandings, which is based purely on comedy.
The two-legged woman is the only common denominator in Molnár’s plays.

The Perfect Peach plays with theatre, as its two main characters write plays for a living. It is as if we are not in the theatre at all and start by thinking about how difficult it is to start the performance, and before the intermission, we think about how to get the tension in that particular place and at the end agonize over the awkwardness of the last words.
The theme continues throughout the performance and gets an extra boost when one of the authors saves his young friend’s love affairs with a plotting play text.

Excellent acting

Directed by Frej Lindqvist , the performance is carefully timed, witty verbiage. The text itself is harmlessly funny, but it doesn’t matter when it’s skilfully put on stage.
It’s always a pleasant surprise when you find something in an actor’s performance that you haven’t seen from him before. Now Carl-Kristian Rundman would pull out of his sleeve the cards of a great comedian as a heroic actor.

Vappu Nalbantoglu’s beautiful prima donna is engaged to a young composer (Pekka Strang), but makes the mistake of fooling around with her old hero actor friend. And as it happens, the cardboard doors of the castle reveal this to the groom, who falls into a dark current.
This is where the writer, brilliantly interpreted by Asko Sarkola , rushes in, who spends the night writing a new play in which the peach plays a decisive role.

Eero Saarinen is another writer who does a good job of playing the role of a slipper who gets a little behind his feet.
Delightful supporting roles as the castle’s staff are played by Antti Litja and Joachim Wigelius.
The peach is bitten lightly, as Molnár has written, but of course the themes of friendship and morality also emerge from there.