Review: Metsä

Champions on stage

Russia, a country of beauty-souled culture, will visit the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre with grandiose gestures and at the same time delicate finesse. Alexander Ostrovsky’s (1823–1886) classic play The Forest will be directed by Yuri Solomin , the director of another legend of Russian theatre, the Maly Theatre.

Ostrovsky, who is poorly known in Finland and has been called the father of Russian playwriting, wrote about fifty plays, many of which depicted the lives of Moscow merchants. One of the most famous is Metsä, which, however, instead of merchants, depicts the sleepy life of a remote country manor that relies on the forest. However, the themes are Otsrovsky’s familiar lust for money, selfishness and, of course, blazing love, strongly winged by humour and a perceptive depiction of human nature.

A solid and deep knowledge of the conditions of the text and the stage, and especially the love for theatre, are strongly reflected in the performance. The Forest is an unashamedly old-fashioned, decorative and poetic performance in which emotions and the human soul are on the surface, but in a carefully guided and positioned manner.

Russian Champions
and Finnish stars

In addition to Ostrovsky and Solom, the performance also shows the handprint of other heavyweight theatre men. Aleksandr Glazunov’s set design is like a large, transforming, three-dimensional painting, in which the actors are positioned as beautiful images. Markku Penttilä’s lights paint sunsets, starry skies and dawns on translucent canvases. Alexei Trefilov’s costumes play with luxury and folklore. Grigori Goberniki’s cinematically entertaining music sets the mood and transports you from one scene to the next.

The Russian masters will be joined by the stars of the Finnish theatre sky, with the playful duo of Asko Sarkola and Esko Roine gigging in the front row. Sarkola’s tragic Gennadi and Roine’s comedy actor Arkadi, both of whom are provincial actors, get to feast on long lingering chats to their heart’s content.

The actors enjoy typing Russian characters, who are also very familiar to us. The characters are carefully but airily controlled. The cast has gripped Solomin’s emotional directing style. Lasse Pöysti’s attentive and capricious lackey, Pertti Koivula’s greedy but heartfelt man of the people, and the self-confident high school student who literally licks the rich widow of Antti Lang’s manor are fun to watch.

Despite its old-fashioned sublimity, The Forest is a genuine comedy. But not in the familiar glittering way that those who book their tickets to the comedies and farces of the city theatres expect during the Christmas party, but in a more subtle way that requires a little patience.

Objection
for entertainment

The premiere audience includes many connoisseurs of Russian culture and cultural radicals of past decades. I can’t help but think that Metsä represents the very art that has been opposed in different eras and for different reasons. Bourgeois, sentimental, ostentatious and lulled art that buries social criticism and the desire for reform.

Perhaps a little surprisingly, the sturdily traditional, fundamentally based performance that defends theatre and life appears valuable and even critical. As a protest against fast-paced and sloppy and endlessly commercial entertainment.

Of course, there is a lot of calculation behind this, too, the great masters are put on stage. But the counterbalance is a great love and belief in art and theatre, in the power of language and images, and in the soul hidden under the surface of all the greed for money.