Review: Missä kuljimme kerran

HELSINKI’S PICTURES TELL A BLACK AND WHITE STORY

Kari Heiskanen’s panoramic translation of Kjell Westö’s Helsinki photographs is warm and cruel
A simple large stage gives space to the little people in history

There is no need to be scared, even though there is mass in the story. Almost 600 pages of the novel are transferred to a three-hour theatre evening, but the performance captures the viewer’s mind.
The play does not repeat the novel, but picks up a concentrated series of exaggerated scenes, drama. You don’t woo the viewer, you have to be vigilant.


The black and white city is divided between the two sides of the Pitkäsilta bridge. Helsinki’s history is captured in photographs that intertwine great historical revolutions, from the collapse of the Tsarist regime to the division of the war-torn city.
Little people are fighting for their existence in the stunted quarters of Helsinki, which is growing into an industrial city. The better-off are already driving cars, dancing swing and radically looking for a third gender.
Vuokko Hovatan Lucie is cold and beautiful, too.
Some people also smell money. The spirit of Helsinki smells of gunpowder and banknotes.

Kjell Westö’s novel
Where We Once Walked enters the stream of images with a flicker. It compiles human destinies and ideas into an extensive album. None
Väinö Linna Westö is not. His urban history does not have to seek the reconciliation of the nation.
Lightning flashes both in the photographer’s lamps and in the history of the city. Images of the Red Brigade with guns in their arms quickly change to other images: corpses lying on the streets of the city.


The huge historical panorama is as if it was made to be shown. Its narrators, people reaching over the barricades, are drawn in the pictures sharp and colourful. Soon we will probably see the stories as a movie as well?

Kari Heiskanen has written a play based on the novel that lives the atmosphere of the original work, picking up close-ups, but also the great perspectives of the time. There is still room for condensation, but in general, the scenes are clearly taken by stylized, cleanly epic theatre.
The most astonishing thing is how the large stage of the City Theatre is limited to very intimate scenes, fixed points between two people. The set opens up the space and closes it in a single room or bed, if necessary.

Katariina Kirjavainen has not loaded the stage with unnecessary stuff, but lets her imagination speak, almost smell. We look at the scenery through the eyes of the camera. People step out of the canvas of the photo studio and mark their own paving stones.


The photographs give the performance a very concrete historical frame of reference, in which the viewer can place the fast-moving moments of the story. Dramaturgically, they could have been used even better as structuring the narrative.
Well-chosen historical photo compilations are projected onto a screen that spans the entire width of the stage. Here is our Helsinki, stained with blood, living its industrial morning. Ugly and beautiful.
The image of the times is also created by
Maija Pekkanen’s precise costumes. The costumes observe, recognizably tell about the way of life of both the working-class quarters and the wealthy population. In Finland, you rarely see such stylish costumes anymore!


The play condenses time, bringing to the surface the declarations of the Reds and Whites, and eventually also the people of Lapua, to solve the world.
On stage, philosophies quickly turn into bloody action, and no one remains untouched.
In Widing’s photography studio, all this translates not only into images, but also into human disintegration.
Eero Aho impressively interprets the two extremes and fractures of the young Eccu’s enthusiastic life.


The performance is warm and cruel. It is abundant, but not a spectacle. Over the years and the hard way, the director has learned to use the possibilities of the City Theatre’s big stage.
At its best, the coordination of many roles also produces solidarity, ensemble theatre.
Rising above the rest
Pekka Valkeejärvi’s thoughtful and structured interpretation of Ivar Grandell, a dissident of his time, and his love story, one of which is
Henriette Hultqvist, beautifully portrayed by Leena Rapola .

Seppo Maijala takes his bright place as Father Widing, who believes in photography.
Niko Saarela tells a believable story with a fast pulse about the football hero Allu, who is destroyed by the legacy of his red childhood.
The power of opposites is brutal. Helsinki has a charged, angular history.