Review: Ihmisen osa

The threads of life meet and diverge

Kari Hotakainen started writing a monologue for Ritva Valkama, but ended up writing the novel The Human Part. And when this novel was dramatized, no one else could even think of for the lead role than Valkama. The play, which is exceptionally rich in text, is absolutely irresistible.

The story of the Malmikunnas yarn merchant family was a new kind of opening for Kari Hotakainen as a writer, not only stylistically, but also in the sense that the publisher had changed.

A writer suffering from a lack of topics buys a life for seven thousand euros from an elderly lady he meets by chance at a book fair, who, after spending her life as a yarn merchant, knows how to trade and knows the human mind. But the parts of people, the lady herself, her husband and their three children, and their family members, are not always what they would like each of them to be.

Hotakainen’s often hilarious narrative style has been transferred to the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre with surprising flexibility. Although there is a lot of text based on the novel, the book does not succumb to explaining. Every word transferred from the pages of the book to the lines is necessary, the actors get liveliness to their characters and the text to be lively without suffering either. The performance is also visually simplistic, the power of the lines is enormous, there is hardly any set design.

Sanna-Kaisa Palo, Jaakko Saariluoma and Armi Toivanen, as the descendants of Malmikunnas, who have distanced themselves from the ideals of their childhood home, are human wanderers of the hard world. The workaholic Helena of Palo and Pekka, who fights against Saariluoma’s exclusion in almost every way, are given more space in the narrative, but it is also necessary. That is how much their fate differs from what their mother tells the author. Especially Saariluoma’s abilities as a creator of a tragicomic character are at their peak. Toivanen also has his hilarious moments when photographing the always nerve-wracking work of a telemarketer.

Leena Uotila and Teemu Palosaari have the grateful task of jumping from one role to another. In Uotila’s gallery, you can find one small diamond after another, whether as a posh lady looking for the meaning of life, as an outspoken telephone customer or as a collapsing layoff. A fine plastic insight is to make the character of the writer interpreted by Palosaari also a postman, who delivers the cards sent by mother Salmi to her children. Kari-Pekka Toivonen’s disgusting success type is a much more straightforward character, even though he is quite spot on as a role.

Would it be an exaggeration to say that Ritva Valkama is now, at the age of 78, in the role of her life, that is, even after everything she has done in her career so far? It just so happens that yarn merchant Salme Malmikunnas has lived the life that is reflected in Ritva Valkama’s everyday realism in the audience. In the character of Valkama, Hotakainen’s narrative changes from a string of words to a living life. You don’t see that very often in theatre, because even though the characters are skilfully made, their backgrounds, relationships and attitudes rarely reach such a complete level.

Of course, Ritva Valkama has all possible help on her side. Not only is he an excellent, multidisciplinary actor, but he also knows Hotakainen’s text exceptionally well, after all, he has read the novel on the radio. Still, The Human Part is precisely a story about a family in which the role of the mother is central, but not so dominant that the story collapses into a monologue assisted by others. The performances of the human part are currently sold out well into the autumn. That’s a good thing – judging by the success, even the much less touching performances seem to be acceptable to the Finnish audience.