Review: Eila, Rampe ja palvattu onni

Praise of common luck

Author Sinikka Nopola’s beloved characters Eila and Rampe are now arriving from Häme to the capital, more specifically to the Arena stage on Hämeentie. It is the new side stage of the Helsinki City Theatre.

Eila and Rampe are middle-aged residents of Tampere, for whom “Tampesteri” is the centre of the nation’s spiritual life. Above all, however, they are ordinary Finns, whose ordinariness is hilariously exaggerated. That’s where the humor comes from. Rampe would like to spend time at the summer cottage doing carpentry and fishing, while Eila gets frustrated with “coming full circles” and wants to travel. We get to go on a trip, for example, to the miracle healer and to the Tuuri village shop.

In their inimitable style, the couple reflects on various phenomena in life, such as shopping cravings and dust. “Life is pretty short and it goes by when I’m chasing dust,” says the energetic Eila in her moment of weakness.

A juicy dialogue breaks out when Eila and Rampe get involved in the research of would-be son-in-law Pirkka. “I’m looking for a couple whose relationship with happiness is straightforward, who in a way don’t represent a postmodern person, but a type of person produced earlier,” Pirkka reveals.

Eila is basically a heartfelt cottage monster. The flamboyant Heidi Herala in the role of Eila occasionally takes up the entire show. Ilmari Saarelainen would have a lot of shots, but he does his proper role as a slipper hero with understatement, precision and respect for a Finnish man. Leena Rapola is the family’s daughter Likka, a young adult living in Helsinki, a “nearly 40-year-old” self-seeker, and Petri Poikolainen is her new boyfriend. With her academic happiness research, Pirkka is also looking for genuine moments of happiness in her own life.
Director Heidi Räsänen also wanted music for the play. The songs composed by Maija Kaunismaa give rhythm to the performance, but sometimes feel like unnecessary extras. There are a couple of hits in the set, such as Rampe’s ode to a good hardware store.

Räsänen, who is from Helsinki, has also directed, among others, Bread Queue Ballad at the Takomo Theatre in 2008 and Q-teatteri’s Siniväriset at the Suomenlinna Summer Theatre last year.
The play Eila and Rampe is enjoyably two-layered: on the surface, it is a hilarious comedy, but right under the surface, there lurk sharp insights into the dynamics of a relationship, for example.