Review: Toveri K

Comrade K is a play about Stalin’s madhouse

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The Helsinki City Theatre is now shooting with a big brush and stylising reveals the horrors of the Stalin era. Otto Wille Kuusinen is Comrade K, who even sacrifices his own family members to prison camps.

The first stage image already reveals the genre. The torso of the statue of Stalin stands in the background, and a long, red tongue hangs grotesquely from the end on the floor. Young men pedal exercise bikes.

Theatre director Asko Sarkola is Otto Wille Kuusinen, Comrade K, a snake who creates his skin according to the economic cycle, and who does not hesitate to sacrifice even his own family members because of his position and ideology. Kreinen, played by Sarkola with small gestures, is a coldly thoughtful character in the turmoil of the play. Cruelly tragic, and not begging for empathy at all.

In addition to Kuusinen, the story focuses on his wife Aino, whom Vappu Nalbantoglu plays a furiously brilliant role without sparing her voice. He embodies the pain of Aino, who was imprisoned for fifteen years, with every movement of her body.

Comrade K is a play written by the world-famous author Edvard Radzinski for the City Theatre about Otto Wille Kuusinen (1881-1964), a Finnish politician who lived more than half of his life in the Soviet Union and survived the purges of the Stalin era unscathed. His urn is the only Finn buried in the Kremlin wall. The audience will surely get even more out of the play if they have time to get acquainted with Otto Wille Kuusinen’s personal history in advance.

The play is directed by Roman Viktyuk, who is well known to the world’s theatre audience, and whose play Jean Genet’s Maids has been directed to full audiences in Moscow for more than twenty years.

The 77-year-old director’s stage language is movement-oriented, and his expression is stylised to the end. Asko Sarkola has an easier time directing Viktjuk than the young actors, but it suits his role well. Sampo Sarkola, Valtteri Tuominen and Tommi Rantamäkiin their many roles, and especially as young Stalins, do their extremely physically demanding roles with consideration in every move and step. Sampo Sarkola’s portrayal of the young man responsible for the execution of the Tsarist family rises to one of the most touching and violent moments in the play.

When the old and trembling Stalin enters the stage in a wheelchair, played by Esko Roine , it is revealed to the viewer once and for all what kind of crazy dictator and executioner the Russian people lived in, and how close it was that Finland did not end up in the same hellish abyss.

It is clear what kind of personal experiences Russian artists want to tell the Finnish audience. Radzinski takes the side of the Finns, against Stalin’s reign of terror and Kuusinen’s renegades. Only Aino Kuusinen gets empathy.

After the performance, toasts were raised on stage. Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja and Minister of Culture and Sport Paavo Arhinmäki , who were present, were quite quiet boys. Although the play is about Otto Wille Kuusinen, it is also a burlesque autopsy of Stalin and the Soviet regime.

“Yes, we could play Comrade K in Moscow as well,” Edvard Radzinsky said.