Review: Missä kuljimme kerran
Meaningful observations
When Kjell Westö’s novel Where We Walked Once was published in the autumn of 2006, it was certain that it would go down in Finnish literary history as soon as it was born. When the Helsinki City Theatre told me about the dramatisation of the novel, I was a little scared.
And I was a little scared even before the premiere. The piece was huge, not a small piece. This piece had been chewed on by director Kari Heiskanen and a working group consisting of 23 actors and musicians and half a hundred people as a background group.
The three-hour play Where We Walked Once runs as skilfully edited stage images from the early years of the 20th century, through independence and the bloody civil war, to the joyful 30s. At worst, the social strata and ideologies of the capital and the surrounding area are measured down to the barrel of a rifle.
On a personal level, we look at solutions that are independent of social background: the victimization of Eccu Widing (Eero Aho), a wealthy home, and Allu Kajander (Niko Saarela), a young worker, is basically the same: both are left without balanced parental love. Niko Saarela has the slang of Allu from Sörkka’s side in his mouth. The final scene of the play, about the role of Eccu Widing, interpreted by Aho, in the history of individuals, is simply sadly beautiful visually and as a summary of the story.
Kari Heiskanen’s decision to use Ivan Grandell (Pekka Valkeejärvi) here and there as the narrator of the story makes the whole thing more robust but does not shackle it into an illustration for the novel.
This, of course, owes a great deal of credit to Valkeejärvi in his role, which conveys Grandell’s sense of destruction and hope phenomenally well.
One of Aarno Sulkanen’s roles creates associations with the North Star, which in itself is a marginally interesting dialogue with Laine’s film direction. The continuum of fiction through acting is only a merit.
An equally strong group of women does not stand out in the same way as the interpreters of male biographies. Lucie Lilliehjelm is a brave tomboy, but when she uses a more harsh accent, Vuokko Hovatta does not quite achieve such a sensual impression of Lucie as at least the novel suggests. Ursula Salo , on the other hand, takes Mandi Salin’s shoes without the slightest doubt about the positive realism of life.
Katariina Kirjavainen’s set design is simple but sufficient. The lighting and sound design by Mikko Ijäkse and Eradj Nazimov is precision work. These have a solid framework in which the director’s desire to give space to the actors’ work works. Music, too, if anything, is a phenomenon of its time. This play doesn’t skimp on that, thanks to saxophonist Larry Price, among others.
Where We Once Walked is good Finnish theatre from start to finish. Its subject matter is topical due to its significant years of history and the stories of relationships that flow around every day. These stories are told over and over again in our cities, but with Kari Heiskanen’s skills as a dramaturg and director, they have been built into an impressive excerpt for the Helsinki City Theatre’s Main Stage. Layering and the possibility of identification are tense demands of the play, the pulse of which is on point here.
It was a bit strange to step into the dark evening, to look at the city lights reflected in Töölö Bay. – April Helsinki 2008.