Review: Myyrä

THE MOLE DEPICTS FINNISH HISTORY IN A CARNIVALESQUE WAY


Jari Tervo was not nominated for the Finlandia Prize, but he was able to premiere the play version of his play Mole at the Helsinki City Theatre.
The performance outlines the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union through the filter of Finlandization, without shying away from grotesque colors. The game is so intense that it doesn’t matter if a few pieces fall.

Sami Keski-Vähälä’s dramatization focuses on Kekkonen’s last decade, to which the past drives its wedges through the delusions of an old man. Kekkonen is the centre of his memoirs, but as a side thread there is the activities of the black sheep of the communist family, Supo detective Jura Karhu.
Already at the beginning of the play, the way in which everything should be approached is expressed when the ball grill Sputnik collides with a huge teddy bear named Misha. Props are often used to steer the interpretation in that direction: cosmonauts in sheepskin caps and ice hockey players stumbling on their hockey skates wearing their huge prenikas.
The common thread should be the search for a spy, a mole. One assumption is that the mole is Kekkonen. However, the common thread twists into many twists and turns during the performance.

Delicious performances

There is enough dancing, booze and women to soften the harshness of high politics. There is so much spying and intrigue that new surprises are constantly appearing around the corner.

The performance, directed by Milko Lehto, tries a few times to question the justification of both individual murder and mass murder, but the question is drowned in carnivalism, which turns norms upside down.
The direction cross-exposes the levels of times, places and states of mind, but the main image remains of the old, chunky Kekkonen, excellently played by Antti Litja , who dies with a wink.
The younger Kekkonen is played by Hannes Suominen and Matti Olavi Ranin.

Rauno Ahonen’s detective Karhu slips through the twists and turns of politics, confused.

Pertti Koivula’s Stalin roars in bloody butcher’s clothes, has propaganda pictures taken of himself alongside the workers and spins Kekkonen into a waltz. Koivula plays his role succulently.

Women made the premiere audience laugh

There are more than fifty roles on stage, so the range of events is enormous. The smoothly fragmented presentation does not glue itself into a whole, but drowns the questions in its multitude.

Markus Tsokkinen’s set design is a multi-layered world that bends from a rural village to a big city.
New worlds are brought onto the stage along the rails. In addition, video technology is utilised by revealing things that would otherwise be invisible through the screen.
The comic is served across the board, but the audience went completely crazy at the premiere when Tiina Pirhonen beckoned to the Germans about Kekkonen’s speech.

Aino Seppo’s wonderfully vigorous interpreter gets to translate the “friendship, peace, blah blah blah” speeches at a Kremlin meeting, where the heads of both countries are already flaunting in their own worlds.
The nearly three-hour performance offers excellent performances, which have mainly been painted with a rough hand.