Review: Sydänmaa

A PLAY FOR THE WHOLE OF FINLAND

An invitation to all those who are able to do so: I’ll go to the Helsinki City Theatre’s studio Pasila to see Heartland. Those who live far away from the capital will hopefully get their chance later, because I wholeheartedly wish this new play a long life all over Finland.

Thirty-year-old Ari-Pekka Lahti’s debut text is set in the plains of Northern Ostrobothnia, but speaks to the entire nation. Lahti writes about four generations of men and women and stretches his time span from the years of the Civil War to the option Finland of the new millennium. My grandfather’s father is a preacher, my grandfather is a communist and my father is a drunkard. The boy searches in vain for himself in Helsinki.

According to the advertising and the programme leaflet, Heartland appears as a gravely serious drama about the darkest aspects of Finnishness. The undertone is heart-wrenchingly raw, but humour flourishes both in Lahti’s text and in Heidi Räsänen’s inventive direction. Martti Suosalo, Heidi Herala and others seem to enjoy twisting the thick Ostrobothnian dialect.

The most unique thing about Heartland is its way of combining new and old. The play is modern and experimental in form, and deeply Finnish in its roots. The writer, who does not shy away from the personal, lives uncomfortably in the present and tries to understand the work of his fathers.