Review: Mies joka kieltäytyi käyttämästä hissiä

TRIPLE PÖYSTI IN LILLAN

Bengt Ahlfors’ Elevator Refusing has now been translated into Finnish with the somewhat stiff name “The Man Who Refused to Use the Elevator” with the help of its performer Lasse Pöysti. When the monologue performer of the play is also responsible for directing, it can be emphatically stated that the performance as a whole is dressed by the actor – and the pattern fits the outfit nicely.
Bengt Ahlfors’ play tells the story of a man living alone in the heart of Helsinki, whose best and only conversation partner is the building’s elevator – or at least that’s the image the viewer is served before a surprising and positive ending. The man’s life appears to be a very uneventful series of days, coloured only by hoe visits to weddings and funerals of unknown people. The mother and the dog have died, the husband has not been able to get married.


Pöysti’s splendid, understated monologue and the intelligently warm humour of the text form a whole that, in Lillan’s sympathetic space, sheds light on a dark-sounding subject. Ahlfors does not only offer melancholic lifelessness, but also opens the doors of opportunity for a lonely man with the help of absurd coincidences. This man is a new life through his imaginary game, what kind of life, it remains open in the end.
Those who are familiar with Pöysti’s performing arts know that the furrows of his face create new dimensions in the character’s mental movements by changing slightly. An almost imperceptible lift of the eyelid, a shiver of the cheek – and the viewer immediately knows what kind of sensations the mental landscape contains. Fans of this kind of performing arts will not be disappointed when they watch Lillan’s new Finnish translation.


Performing a one-and-a-half-hour monologue in such a way that the intensity between the audience and the stage is unrelenting is extremely demanding, both physically and mentally. When Pöysti still retains the dignity of his subject, the work of art is complete.
Perhaps the most touching scenes in the play tell of the childhood of the now reclusive man. The man’s boyhood looks like a timid and shy breech wandering in a jungle of communication difficulties, where the rattling passage of the elevator brings a safe awareness of repetition and peace. But danger lurks in the people who operate the machine.
Ahlfors’ text makes the man a deep and sensitive individual, whose life would have gone a little differently. To other people, this sidewalk would have had much more to give than many louder asphalt knights.