Review: Yksi mies, kaksi pomoa
Cheekless treatment, professionally
Headless hustle and bustle without any content. It was commissioned and promised, and it also kept its promise to One Man, Two Bosses at the Helsinki City Theatre.
The story of the play One Man, Two Bosses is based on Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte classic The Servant of Two Masters, written in the 18th century.
In it, a hungry but resourceful harlequin character takes, partly by accident, two jobs for himself. The result is letters, money and luggage that end up in the wrong hands, as well as lies that have to be corrected with new, one crazier than the other.
Richard Bean’s version is set in Brighton in the early 1960s.
The first scene seems stiff, but the style is explained as the performance progresses. It lays the foundation for future cheeklessness.
When the wheel of lies and misunderstandings starts turning, so do the rounds of expression. To quote director Neil Hardwick , a low and worthless treatment begins.
Santeri Kinnunen plays the lead role as a supple and lovable jerk, and dancer-choreographer Tommi Huovinen performs an acrobatic performance as a waitress teetering on the edge of the grave.
Iikka Forss’s self-touching acting budding makes you laugh with its recognizability. The actors do a good job across the board.
Sari Siikander’s strong Dolly and Sanna-June Hyde’s closed Llo Pauline are both wonderful characters.
In between, a personal revelation.
I have a special relationship with the play, because in my amateur theatre past I have performed in the original. I was the one who was a dead end.
My fiancée, Silvio, was later played by fashion designer Samu-Jussi Koski, who later became known as the artistic director of Marimekko and was awarded this year’s Golden Clothing Tree award.
So my viewing experience was filled with nostalgia, but otherwise the action on the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre brings tears of laughter to my eyes more than tears of emotion.
The use of skiffle music is a pleasant surprise.
(That is, music that is played with something other than an instrument, such as a laundry board. For example, the Beatles’ sons originally played in a skiffle band called The Quarrymen.)
The actors are also quite talented musicians, for example, Forss presents his own kind of washboard interpretation.
The fourth wall between the auditorium and the stage is broken here and there.
Following the traditions of commedia dell’arte and British low comedy (it could be equivalent to a Finnish bush farce), the progression of the play is interrupted by comic program numbers and loose jokes that do not advance the story itself in any way.
The audience will also be able to participate in the performance, but there is no point in revealing more about it.
To my disappointment, there is only one fart in the performance, quite hefty though. There is plenty of other nonsense.
That is also needed, sometimes it is quite liberating to leave the analysis and the pain of the world in the cloakroom and laugh.
Special thanks to the translator Mikko Koivusalo. The explanations of the servants of the two masters, who make up lies, tickle both the nerves of laughter and the tongue-loving mind.