Review: Sydänmaa
KOKKOLA, FOGGY WITH FAITH AND LIQUOR
Kokkola could represent almost any small Finnish place. At the Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Pasila, it is the setting of Ari-Pekka Lahti’s play Heartland and part of his own history. Sydänmaa had its premiere in mid-September.
Humility is a true Finnish virtue that children have been brought up to do by taking away their beliefs at home and at school. This is also the case in Heartland, where people with cerebral palsy are constantly reminded of their disability. And where the future genetics studies of a boy who moves to Helsinki to study are complete nonsense. Where the children are nothing and neither are the wives.
The father is frosted by liquor and the mother by faith, which is admittedly shaky and can be applied for one’s own purposes. In the lives of those who grew up in the 1980s, memories come up with both a red Honda Monkey and a tube bag from 1983.
The story goes back a long way, from the family’s hundred-year history. About the Civil War. About the execution of the Red. When a brother is forced to watch his brother die of frostbite.
Cursed family history
The heartland is harsh, but so brutally real. The bond between the son and sister (Jarkko Lahti and Laura Birn) of the central characters is more or less able to survive into adulthood, even though the brother, who has shrunk to his studio apartment in Helsinki, is unable to cope with his sister until the end.
Heartland, directed by Heidi Räsänen, starts with an old family story about the willow grouse. In it, a girl child suspected of being a witch is killed, and when the child’s innocence is discovered, the child’s soul is left wandering through the wilderness of Syjänmaa.
Willow Grouse is a disabled sister. A childlike girl, a sister who gets to Helsinki and gets married only to be beaten once again.
There is faith and ecstasy in the performance, a drunken Kokkolan Palloveikot champion player father (Martti Suosalo), a pious mother (Heidi Herlala). A façade of a happy life, a century-old school atmosphere moved to the 80s. Just a backdrop of life, where young people moan and want to get away.
Karmo Mende’s set design reflects the world of the performance well. An indicative pine forest in the background, a North Ostrobothnian barn, a prison camp, a school bench and a caravan in front.
True is the counterbalance to humour
Heartland is true, but the harshness is clouded by the caricature qualities of the characters. They spark laughter, even though there is no reason for laughter. There is nothing funny about the story, but there is a lot in its icons.
Martti Suosalo’s father is an excellent old-fashioned man who hides his low self-esteem by nibbling on others. And by drinking liquor. But Suosalo’s father is an enormously excellent drunkard, such a brutal intermittent walker that when at first the drunkard’s swaying makes you laugh a lot, finally you can hear a few faint slurs from the audience.
There are plenty of intermittent walkers both in Helsinki and elsewhere. It’s great to make the audience laugh and take the situation to the point where laughter is inappropriate.
There are also humorous caricatures in the performance of Jarkko Rantanen’s grandfather, who is basically a magnificent communist, a red, the bearer of family history. An old man who can’t believe the fall of the Soviet Union.
Jari Pehkonen’s supple scrap dealer, strict teacher and slippery boss are also among the characters in the play who serve as a contrast to Jarkko Lahti’s serious narrator self, among others.
In the performance, Lahti’s narrator self and the boy move in the middle ground of expression. The boy is the driver of the story, who occasionally breaks away from the role of a playwright. He is in control of the story, but he is unable to keep it in check. She can’t do anything about history and becomes a bystander to her sister’s fate.
Laura Birn’s disabled sister is the person to whom she wishes nothing but the best. But when it doesn’t. You can’t get out of life even with a rifle. The innocent girl’s soul wanders until a new story begins.