Review: Missä kuljimme kerran
WHERE WE ONCE WALKED
At least the undersigned went to the premiere at the Helsinki City Theatre with excitement and rather scepticism. How has director Kari Heiskanen managed to condense and transfer to the big stage Kjell Westö’s fine brick-and-mortar novel Where Did We Walk Once Upon a Time? Has the compulsion for condensation and simplification succeeded in preserving the essentials, but has it succumbed to rotten compromises and emphases that woo the current “prevailing opinion”?
The doubts turned out to be mostly unfounded. The play has managed to pick out almost all the most essential, touching and telling things from the novel without hiding it or making compromises. There would have been room for further condensation, and reading the book is essential for understanding many of the scenes. The whole ensemble is doing a great job. The brilliant staging is crowned by a black-and-white cavalcade of images of people and life in Helsinki.
However, doubts continued long into the first act. The year 1918, and especially the beginning of the Civil War, is the weak point of Westö’s novel, and the picture given by the play does not differ much from it. A picture emerges of a planned subversion against the legitimate authorities and a war with the help of Red Russian soldiers. The whites will then take revenge on all this.
This did not happen in reality. The seizure of power began after a long hesitation in a situation where the preparations of the White side for the armed suppression of the labour movement had already been completed, and partly already implemented. The role of Russian volunteer soldiers in the revolution and the war was marginal. And the White Terror was a top-down and consistent continuation of what was already planned before the war.
A picture from January 1918 is no small problem. After all, the events of the Civil War are decisive in the play, because they affect the later lives of the characters. Two of the central characters of the book and the play, Eccu Widing and Cedi Lilliehjelm, are even destroyed, because they cannot forget what kind of bloodshed those who were guilty of during the “revenge expeditions” of the Whites, what they had experienced.
But in the play, the problem is smaller and more understandable. By condensing the first half of the novel away from the beginning of the play and moving it into later flashbacks, the first act clearly has a perspective on 1918 that of the Swedish-speaking bourgeoisie, manor owners and upper middle class of Helsinki. The perspective can only be skewed. The Reds who participated in the inspection and expropriation patrols are seen through their eyes, as impersonal characters, lawbreakers and robbers who were appropriate to slaughter when the fortunes of war turned.
As personal and introductory characters, the Reds, the representatives of the workers, appear on stage only from the end of the first act, in the form of Allan Kajander, who only becomes one of the main characters. And Alluhan was just a minor boy during the class war. From a Swedish-speaking working-class family, by the way.
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What happened then? The play brings out the sweet life of the Helsinki gentry, the longing for love, business, prohibition and speakeasies, where they also try to drown out the nightmares of war, the arrival of a new fashion, jazz in Helsinki.
The victory of the Whites divides the already divided city. The workers and the poor are toiling and straining somewhere. Until Allu’s and his family’s lives move the world north of Pitkäsilta to the middle of the stage.
Mussolini and his fascists rise to power in Italy, and there is no shortage of those in Finland who want to end the unfinished “war of independence” to the last detail. Soon the Lapua movement marches to Helsinki and the deportations of dissidents begin.
Football hero Allu becomes politicized and participates in the activities of the underground communist movement. Hitler comes to power in Germany. In no time, the German school in Helsinki is teaching a full head of Nazi doctrines. Europe and Finland are being driven towards war along with it. Allu is told that he goes to prison and is sometimes released, but he is recaptured and executed when the Continuation War begins. At the end of the play, additional refresher training begins.
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Of the play’s many characters and their performers, a few stand out above the rest.
Pekka Valkeejärvi plays one of the finest roles of his career as the humanist intellectual Ivar Grandell, who is not saved from reminiscence by avoiding commitment. He commits himself unconditionally to his love for actress Henriette Hultqvist, played by Leena Rapola . The character, which is somewhat reminiscent of the tailor Halme, is present throughout the play almost as a narrator.
The tragic character of photographer Eccu Widing is drawn credibly by Eero Aho. As father Widing, Seppo Maijala is also convincing. Eccuak’s even more tragic character is Cedi, interpreted by Pekka Huotari , who seeks justification for his bloody deeds of war in right-wing fanaticism, but breaks down.
In the role of Lucie, Vuokko Hovatta is a plausibly modern female character even by today’s perspective, but the adaptation does not give enough room for Lucie’s complexity.
Niko Saarela plays a handsome, down-to-earth role as Allan Kajander. He is not available for the bourgeoisie to buy, not for a football club or otherwise. Allu is not destroyed by the “legacy of his red childhood” but by the principle he himself has adopted and the bullets of barley.