Review: Palvelija
Helsinki City Theatre: The Servant. Script by Kari Hotakainen, directed by Martti Suosalo and Raila Leppäkoski, visual design by Max Wikström, sound design by Jussi Kärkkäinen, dramaturgy by Henna Piirto. Performance on the Arena stage 28.4.
“Imagination is like the free internet,” says lecturer, Detective Superintendent Arto Jylhämö, to the seminar crowd gathered to hear him. The topic of the lecture is human nature. The Detective Superintendent opens up his perspectives on why other people are more susceptible to serving and when a servant’s mind collapses. What kind of person grabs a knife and commits a homicide? At the same time, Jylhämö sheds light on the background of a criminal case that is triggered by the downside of serving – the moment when you can no longer cope.
The lecture on human nature and the story intertwined with it is written by Kari Hotakainen and presented and directed by Martti Suosalo. Suosalo is also responsible for carrying out the two-hour performance as a monologue, with the characters whistling. When Jylhämö takes off her everyday jacket, she becomes a mental health nurse in the blink of an eye. Wearing a checkered cap, she is a suntio and a hairdresser who is bored with her husband in a blonde wig.
Suosalo’s ability to bring a completely different character to the stage in a second is astonishing. At its worst, all you need is a slightly sloppy mouth position or a cigarette held on a relaxed wrist. And just the right amount of insight in the visuals of the performance designed by Max Wikström.
Inside them are new grannies
As a pair of writers, Kari Hotakainen is technically skilled, not a single sentence contains any extra, the content is weighed by the author to the microgram. Familiar Hotakainen: precise expression, everydayness, dirty parallels between life and death. For example, in a midwife’s speech: “I am a baby broker. I deliver babies from a cramped place to a wide world! I take a commission of two thousand two hundred euros a month with supplements, regardless of the size and weight of the baby.”
Jylhämö is the narrator in a story in which he himself has a role. In the role of Detective Superintendent, he is an outsider who analytically examines the situation, but at the same time knows the characters personally. This fascinating contrast between internalization and being an outsider colors the entire play, and the Maatuska dolls are a great metaphor for it. The play, which is staged in the form of a lecture, keeps the audience well in their hands, for which the greatest thanks naturally fall to Suosalo’s abilities. Everyone is eager to see what character Suosalo will conjure up next.
The sovereignty of the role performance somewhat tramples on the merits of the text. I believe that even more could have been made of the philosophical dimension of the alvelija. Unfortunately, the first half with its numerous characters now seemed to swing at the expense of the latter.