Review: Terrorismi
THERE’S A LITTLE TERRORIST IN ALL OF US
Studio Pasila’s play Terrorism brings a great subject to the level of everyday life
Yes, Siberia teaches, or should I say Ural 1 from those corners, because from those corners comes the play Terrorism, which had its Finnish premiere on Wednesday at the Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Pasila. Behind the play are the secretive Presnyakov brothers, who reportedly live in Yekaterinburg.
Oleg and Vladimir, who are in their thirties, don’t really want to talk about themselves or direct the reception of their work. However, based on the script, we know that the Presnyakovs, who devour philosophy, want to make impressive plays about the present day.
They also seem to know how to do that. Terrorism is an insightful drama, the genre of which is probably mainly black comedy.
Ismi is implemented in everyday life
The play, written by the Presnyakovs, premiered in Moscow in November 2002, just a few weeks after the “freedom fighters” had taken an entire theater audience hostage in the same city. There were more than a hundred bodies in that skirmish.
In Finland, the situation is not quite as explosive, but the play of the Ural boys does find a sounding board in our attitude climate as well. 1 Terrorism is much more subtle in its themes than it might sound at first.
In the play, the pompous and, at least for Finns, relatively distant ism is broken down to the everyday individual level, perhaps more in line with the Finnish word terror. We are not talking about grand hostage scenarios with political goals, but about people’s everyday attitudes towards each other.
In the terrorist play, bullying is everywhere, because people have stopped seeing the human in each other. At some point, someone then goes crazy and decides to pay the pots. Soon we are already on the side of ism, looking elsewhere for the culprits for our own bad feelings.
Insightful text
Terrorism is made up of six acts, each of which at first glance seems detached, even half-carelessly constructed. However, the script is on a strong foundation. As the story progresses, a single web is woven from the acts, at the junction of which the wife cheats on her husband, with fatal consequences.
Viktor Drevitsky’s stylishly simplified direction combines the basic framework of the plot with, among other things, descriptions of the simping of army special forces and the office world, where bosses and subordinates compete against each other. With the viewer’s insights, the text constantly opens up additional dimensions; A seemingly insignificant detail in one act may be the key to understanding the next scene.
Somewhat surprisingly, Terrorism is quite light in tone, at least if we compare it to Kari Heiskanen’s view of terrorism last autumn in the Group Theatre’s play All Saints’ Day. At the end, this one does get serious, but there’s a lot of apt comedy and quite a lot of frustrating sketch-like laughter in between. In a way, it’s funny when, for example, Eija Vilpas presents a urinary tract infection dressed as a Russian peasant. On the other hand, the tone of the dialogue is sometimes too declarative at the beginning.
Man is a mystery
Despite small reproaches, Terrorism succeeds , definitely. The play challenges the viewer to reflect on the machines of everyday power and subjugation that are usually ignored as self-evident. It questions and questions, but allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
Due to the structure of the play, the roles do not have time to become very multifaceted. That was hardly the intention either, because the world we are depicting is a mystery to another. This has always been the case, but instead of wanting to find out about the mystery, we want to subordinate it to an unwilling part of our own obsessive worldview. That, if anything, is modern selfishness, terror.
Of the performances, the most memorable are Santeri Kinnunen’s leader type, Sampo Sarkola’s important office boss, and Vappu Nalbantoglu, who plays a deceitful wife, whose view of the neurotic nymphomaniac is downright hilarious.