Review: Kuninkaan puhe

The king got a vote, the empire got a king

The first thing that strikes me about The King’s Speech is its resemblance to the recent film adaptation.

Of course, it is difficult to avoid a certain identity when the text comes from the same pen and is based on well-known real events, but The King’s speech seems to move on very similar steps both on stage and on the screen.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the film directed by Tom Hooper opened up a fascinating inside look behind the scenes of the use of power, and David Seidler’s play does not essentially lose to its inevitable reference work. Seidler also wrote the screenplay for the film.

There are also small differences in emphasis. While Winston Churchill’s monumental character in the film mainly served as a spectacular set, in Seidler’s play Churchill is like a truth-teller in an ancient drama, who, a little on the sidelines of events, tells the audience what is really going on at any given time.

Jari Pehkonen’s performance as Churchill brings slightly caricature-like features to the character, but Pehkonen manages to balance in the demanding role well enough to avoid all kinds of empty laughter.

Pehkonen’s hefty Churchill brings the dimension of secular power and a realistic sense of the world political storms of the late 1930s to the King’s speech . It served as an important counterweight to monarchical and ecclesiastical power, which in Britain under George VI was obviously unaware of the turmoil caused by continental European dictatorships.

A chamber play on a big stage

However, the dramatic and human core of the King’s speech lies in the relationship between the king suffering from stuttering and his speech therapist, which slowly develops from complete distrust into a genuine and lifelong friendship.

Bertie (Carl-Kristian Rundman) takes the throne against his will and takes as royal a name that is as demanding as possible, as if to show the world that he feels responsible for preserving the monarchy.

Sickly and serious, Bertie abhors public appearances where his stuttering makes him seem simple.

Lionel Logue (Pertti Sveholm), an eccentric self-taught therapist who emigrated from Australia to London, opens all kinds of locks about his patient’s traumatic past and finally gives the king a voice that the empire listens to “at this serious and perhaps the most fateful moment in our history”.

David Seidler’s drama is essentially a rather intimate chamber play, which director Kari Heiskanen has brought to the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, which should by no means be considered particularly intimate.

However, the solution is not entirely impossible, as the open space of the big stage has been divided in two with clever dramatisation and a successful set design solution. In the foreground, we are in Logue’s reception area, and further back on the edge of the stage, the interior of Buckingham Palace rises. The moods change in a balanced way from the private problems of the royal family to the great currents of world history.

The King’s Speech is a men’s play in which Mrs. Simpson drives the royal house into crisis, but the men solve the problem. The female characters, including the fascinatingly infamous Wallis Simpson, are overshadowed by kings and ministers and bishops.