Review: Onneli ja Anneli

Ruusukuja civic activists


The wow effect comes right at the beginning of the play Onneli and Anneli: Mrs. Ruusupuu’s hands stretch and reach everywhere fatefully. The magic created by Marjatta Kurenniemi in the books spreads to the stage from the first seconds.
An adult can see how the trick is done, because his imagination is lazy and faded. But the child’s wonder is genuine: How is this possible?

Eppu Nuotio and Tuutikki Tolonen have dramatised Kurenniemi’s first three books Onneli ja Anneli into an effective play, and Lija Fischer , the director of the Lappeenranta City Theatre, who is visiting Helsinki, has a witty and dense rhythm and a wonderfully visionary approach.

Helsinki City Theatre’s Onneli (Pihla Penttinen) is light and Anneli (Kreeta Salminen) is dark, unlike in the books. At first, I suspect that the actors misremember their names, but no. In this play, hair color doesn’t matter.

There is no reproduction of the illustrations in the books on stage. Maija Karma’s roses have been replaced by green leaves, and two little girls’ very own house with its lovely things is conjured up with just a few objects and moments when coffee pots and dusters fly by themselves.

I wonder if I’m disappointed that I still don’t see the girls’ kitchen furniture. Yes, but only at the very beginning. Fischer’s focus is on the story, not on the merchandise sets.

The solution is the right one. Besides, the images of books that have been read by those who have read Onneli and Anneli are so strong that they could not be fulfilled in any way.

Fischer’s Anneli and Onneli are civic activists.
Fischer has not brought anything to the story beyond Kurenniemi, but the play’s emphases clearly show what Onnel and Anneli are all about: two girls whose social conscience is incorruptible.

Like adults, Onneli and Anneli do not turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of children that happens all the time in the Ruusukuja orphanage. They are independent thinkers and actors who are not stopped even by the media. Is there a bolder act than to stand against public opinion, which is proven to be correct by words and pictures in the columns of the newspaper.

Onneli and Anneli also had time to be a citizen patrol when catching the thugs moving around the neighbourhood.

Onnel and Anneli’s ultimate evil is the housekeeper of Anneli’s former home, Minna Pinna (Vappu Nalbantoglu), the current director of the orphanage.

In a play that is not specifically set in any time, he is a rather modern and media-sexy character: greedy and two-faced, who benefits financially from the plight of others.

Nalbantoglu concretely shows how the bad usually don’t get their wages but a raise. Nalbantogu’s physical acting draws attention to himself irresistibly past the other characters in the play.

Anyone understands that Minna Pinta has all the qualities that make it possible in the world today.
In the Rose Alley, Minna Pinna is released, but who knows where in the world she will appear next?

Good: Clarity, magic, execution of themes.

Bad: The Vaaksa tribes only glimpse.

Special: Marjatta Kurenniemi, who was born in Helsinki, lived and died in Taipalsaari.