Review: Viivi ja Wagner

Viivi and the Wagner fever rises

Compared to the 2002 premiere version of the Turku City Theatre
Viivi and Wagner from Helsinki are more entertaining. The Turku performance did not include
e.g. dance and music scenes, which in Helsinki
central position.


Directed by Tiina Puumalainen, Viivi and Wagner stars popular favourites
Risto Kaskilahti and Sari Siikander. Kaskilahti is known not only from the theatre but also from
And I don’t really need any introductions. Siikander has also become familiar
with Finns on many stages, most recently e.g. the Tampere Workers’
Marilyn Monroe in the theatre’s musical Marilyn on the big stage of Työvis.

Wagner in Kaskilahti is just like the one in Uuno Turhapuro’s and the Christmas ham blank
a kind of crossbreed chauvinist style just like in a comic. On the theatre stage, there is
Maybe a little easier (than in a 4-5 square strip) to justify why
Viivi, who mostly seems quite smart, is still the
even though he farts, slurps, devours food and avoids everything
Useful work until the very end. The answer is clear: for love and sex.

Siikander manages to pump the same seemingly inexhaustible
female energy as so often before. A dash of feminine insecurity mixed in
and volatility, the result is almost perfect.

The excellent cast of Viivi and Wagner also includes Eppu Salminen,
Heidi Herala, Matti Rasila, Sanna Saarijärvi and Pia Runnakko. Brilliant
supporting performances – or rather, masterful caricatures – in the performance
of the five are conjured up by almost everyone, and it’s actually wrong to point out to others
before anyone else, but this time Herala’s and Salminen’s works
deserve particularly furious applause.