Review: There’s no Harri
There is something to be said about temporary agency work
The comedy There’s no Harri , which premiered at the Helsinki City Theatre’s Pasila studio on Tuesday, is advertised as a charming story about a person’s desire to be something other than what they are.
However, that desire in comedy is very difficult to find, one can comment on the characterization – that is, if in the case of comedy, one can present such a serious view.
In the face of necessity, those building blocks of comedy are created in this play, not desire.
The reputation of the temporary work company is gone, and selling people to work sites is not taking off. The core of the comedy is then that the owner duo, who have spent their careers working as desk workers, take a desperate act to save their company from ruin and hire themselves for temporary work, one to erect traffic signs on Ring Road III, the other as an asphalt man on the highway.
We come to a situation where the scriptwriter rightly asks the question of what it is all about, when the means of production is owned by a company that sells it.
Humor is created when you add a more or less stupid wife and an obsessed ex-wife and a fat-skinned worker’s duo to such a bizarre situation.
Humour bites. Based on the reactions of the premiere audience, Studio Pasila’s performances can be predicted to have full audiences and a long lifespan.
And why wouldn’t it bite. In her direction, Tiina Lymi relies on sitcom, which would be guaranteed to get through even if the roles had less comedy-making skills than Mari Perankoski and Jussi Lampi have.
It is a testament to Lymi’s insightful direction and apt casting choices that success in making a comedy is definitely not just up to Perankoski and Lampi.
Panu Vauhkonen and Juha Jokela, who play the more simple roles of the asphalt man, pass by the main stars. Vauhkonen deserves a special mention for his physically demanding movements with his stomach slanting to the floor.
Mika Ripatti’s script thrives on the very mundane ramblings that are cultivated in it. They are nudged from time to time, but you don’t have time to get tired of them. It is probably due to naturalness. The lines are not made by doing.
It is not customary to look for profound intentions, either hidden or revealed, in such plays without being guilty of seriousness. Without digging further, however, they can be found in Mika Ripatti’s script. For example, there is ageism, and also solidarity between workers.
A person who is too old to be a workman has to pretend to be younger than his age in order to get a job. Clearly today.
Solidarity between workers, on the other hand, is a question when the real worker-friends of the fake worker-man fight against this exploitative rental company, i.e. the object of their solidarity. That also happens in this country of legal sympathy strikes.