Review: Viivi ja Wagner
WAGNERIAN EXPERIENCE
By the way, you won’t believe what great relatives Viivi has! Even Wagner’s strangeness remains at the level of a schoolboy when Viivi’s grandmother or Aunt Fylli or Uncle Julle step into the ring.
For example, Grandma (Pia Runnakko) is so lewd that even rough people’s ears start to burn when she gives life advice to her granddaughter, and Aunt Fylli (Sanna Saarijärvi) is so stupid that even a blonde with artificial intelligence understands it.
And what about Uncle Julle (Eppu Salminen) then. Everyone has some kind of experience of the Savonian-type old man, who is only funny in his own opinion and happy to tell it to everyone and everywhere. Uncle Julle is not like that, but beats the Savonian dad in his annoyance a hundred zero.
Directed by TIINA PUUMALAINEN, Viivi and Wagner is certainly not about transferring popular and beloved comic book characters from the strip to the theatre stage as such, but about creating two familiar characters in their own, very lively world.
The jokes don’t run out of charge in every third shot, and even though the arc of the drama can’t be found even with an excavator, it’s a pleasure to watch it when the professionals charge and let it go at full speed.
On stage, everything is stretched and exaggerated in a clever and stylized way, the products of popular culture are effectively plundered and they are ridden joyfully uninhibited over all fences.
In fact, the dialogue familiar from the comic book is almost secondary in this physical fireworks.
The characters’ personalities, the chemistry between them and the whole atmosphere get their ecstatic character from pure acting and bringing things into theatre. When was the last time you saw a refrigerator in a big and important supporting role?
Heidi Herala, who plays Viivi’s mother, only needs to appear on stage and everyone knows from the tendons of her neck what kind of person she is: a very tight old lemon who starts to organize her daughter’s life as soon as she arrives at her home. An absolutely great performance.
Risto Kaskilahti is an unbeatable pig as Wagner. It is increasingly difficult to think of Wagner as just a pig, there are so many human qualities in it. Eppu Salminen , on the other hand, shows his showmanship a couple of times: first as the karaoke performers of Hell and later as Uncle Julle.
Sari Siikander’s Viivi is always like a violin tuned too tightly on PMS strings. In my head, Viivi only explodes from time to time and doesn’t drink a hundred in a glass all the time.
VERY SUPERIMPOSED AND PROLONGED is Wagner’s dream scene; the one where he visits Hell. But it doesn’t matter at all. Life or theatre is not right only when it is serious and correct in its form. Just go for it.