Review: Vaimoni on toista maata

A memorable visit

The comedy Hemmafesten, written by French director Gilles Dyrek, which ran at Lilla Teatern last autumn, is now being seen in Finnish. The play, translated into Finnish by Reita Lounatvuori, has been titled My Wife Is Another Country.

The starting point is that the young couple Elina and Janne, who are planning the wedding, invite the man’s old study friend Risto and his girlfriend Veera to dinner. The visit starts to go wrong right from the start, as the girlfriend seems strangely quiet. A naïve young couple realises that Veera must be a foreigner because she doesn’t say anything.

In fact, the silence is due to a disagreement between Risto and Veera. Veera is bored with the whole visit, and she makes a mess of everything by pretending to be a refugee from unknown Hanistan.

The contemporary French comedy directed by Arn-Henrik Blomqvist works well in our circumstances as well. The evening of two couples takes on more and more wild features, and you inevitably get carried away. The light-hearted and cheerful performance is also about people and their prejudices. Unexpected situations also reveal new, not always so beautiful sides of many.

Helena Vierikko and Sampo Sarkola are seen as a gullible couple, and Jonna Järnefelt and Kari-Pekka Toivonen as strangely behaving guests. The quartet does precise work on stage, especially Järnefelt flashes amazing comedic skills.