Review: Kuninkaan puhe
The King’s speech is confident and strong theatre
The Helsinki City Theatre’s large-scale production in the spring already has the ingredients for audience success. The drama The King’s Speech , which garnered a large number of viewers and won awards as a film in 2010, will now be seen on stage with a strong cast and director Kari Heiskanen , who makes great use of the capacity of the big stage.
David Seidler’s play had its Finnish premiere immediately after its world premiere in London in February. It is easy to bet on a long life for the king’s speech , as the play represents a good old emotional spoken word drama based on real events, which is based on a strong dramatic theme, well-written dialogue and complex protagonists with plenty to interpret for the star actors.
Heiskanen, who has often been responsible for the more ambitious directions on the big stage at the Helsinki City Theatre, directs The King’s Speech and creates confident and enjoyable theatre.
The rhythm of the performance has been fine-tuned, and the cuts from one scene to the next move beautifully and lightly through space and time. The visual identity, which is based on empty space and impressive set, lighting and costume elements, and a few documentary projections, creates strong images, but does not block the space from the stage, but leaves room for the imagination to move.
Shakespearean power struggle
Although the power struggles take on Shakespearean features and references, we are now moving in the last century, in storms that foreshadow the Second World War. On different sides of Europe, power-hungry leaders Hitler and Stalin are stirring up the will to fight with their speeches, and Great Britain, leaning on its glorious past, is teetering on the brink of crises. King George V (Tom Wentzel) dies, and the heir to the throne, Edward III (Iikka Forss), spends too much time with the twice-divorced Mrs. Wallis Simpson, as well as the fascists and Germans.
After Edward abdicates, Bertie, the second eldest of the brothers, must shoulder his responsibilities to his people and family. The nation needs a king to be its mouthpiece in times of need, but the task is not easy for a man who has lost his own voice in his disciplined and complicated subordinate life.
For the stuttering Bertie, the role of the king is a nightmare. The radio, which transmits the voice of the ruler to every home of the nation, both at home and overseas, becomes the measure of the king’s fate. Elisabeth, a loving and loyal wife, finds an original speech teacher, the failed actor Lionel Logue, who seems to be capable of miracles.
The King Meets a Friend
The drama focusing on the individual is based on historical battles in which politicians, led by Winston Churchill (Jari Pehkonen), and the Church, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rauno Ahonen), participate. The play proceeds along the paths familiar from the film. Although the stage version contains more political influences than the film, The King’s Speech focuses above all on the friendship, weaknesses and ambitions of two men from different backgrounds, as well as the struggle to find their own place.
Carl-Kristian Rundman does a convincing job in his “Oscar role” as Bertie, who is repressed by speech impediment and royal upbringing. The warm heart of the performance is the speech teaching sessions of Lionel, performed by Bertie and Pertti Sveholm in a relaxed and sovereign manner. For the first time in his life, the closed king meets a man of the people and lets him peek under his durable shell. There is even more humour and warmth in the encounter between the two men than in the film.
The role of the women in the play is largely to represent different social classes and personalities. Bertie’s wife, Elisabeth, interpreted by Vuokko Hovatta in a subdued sweet way, represents upper-class restraint, manners and tradition that compare to the popular roots of Lionel’s wife Myrle (Eija Vilpas) and Wallis Simpson’s (Kirsi Karlenius) American powerlessness and liberalism.