Review: Kauppamatkustajan kuolema

Kyllikki Forssell and Esko Salminen fill the big stage of the City Theatre

40 years of friendship makes it easier to understand the co-star

The combined charisma of Kyllikki Forssell and Esko Salminen will be thrown off the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre this autumn in Arthur Miller’s modern classic The Death of a Merchant Traveller.
The play is also currently being performed on Broadway – sold out.
Salminen is familiar with the stage of the City Theatre for many years, Forssell is there for the first time: “Not at all as terrible a stage as I feared beforehand,” he sighs.
Salminen praises his colleague’s courage: “First Urho Kaleva Kekkonen crossed the Pitkäsilta bridge, then Casimir Ehnroth, and finally Kyllikki Forssell also ventured into the working-class district!”
To which Forssell replies: “Dear these colleagues!”
These two greats have been working together for more than 40 years. You don’t have to get to know your co-star first when you start working. That’s an advantage,” both say.

Insights
around the clock

The work is difficult anyway and there is a tough task ahead, so the task is made easier by trust in the other person and a common understanding of theatre – or rather, an understanding of how to build a role.
The years spent together at the National Theatre have produced a common consciousness and language. Seven years ago, they last played a couple who are dependent on each other and are torn apart in Lars Noren’s play A Night Longer Than Life.
It was a tough story about the destruction of Eugene ONeill’s family, which Kurt Nuotio directed for the National Small Stage. He received the Eino Kalima Award for his work.
They are so used to working together that they have had time to think about the characters and lives of the married couple Willy and Linda they are playing together even before the rehearsals began.
They may also call each other at different times of the day with their insights, questions and doubts.
The most important thing in cooperation is that one does not unilaterally impose the other. They say that they take even turns shepherding each other.
Forssell, who has played great monologues for many years, says that he especially appreciates being able to work together with a reliable co-star who does not try to master but is still critical.
Salminen jokes that “Kylikki is a tough boss, but the Willy of the play is in his voice all the time. If Linda tries to say something, Willy tells her to shut her mouth. Suits me.”
The duel is guided by Reko Lundan. The age difference doesn’t matter, “Lundan is made in old leather,” the actors praise. And age doesn’t matter that much in the theatre. At work, you are in the same situation, regardless of age.
“Not at all a slob, unusually mature for his age,” Forssell confirms Salminen’s statement.

Finland is alive
Miller’s time

Both of them are already familiar with Arthur Miller. Salminen has acted in the play View from the Bridge, and Forssell once played the central role of Abigail in The Trial by Fire.
Both have also read Miller’s two-brick-thick biography The Furrows of Time, in which Miller gives an account of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe, among other things.
After reading the biography, you can see why Miller’s plays are so true. In them, he writes about his own family, his own experience.
“Miller, who was born in Harlem, has listened to and recorded his surroundings carefully. His sense of dialogue and precision show why he writes drama and not prose,” Salminen says.
“There is something almost Chekhovian incorruptible, tragic and comical about Miller at the same time. He admired Chekhov, and most recently directed Lokki,” Salminen ponders.
Willy, a shopkeeper who feeds Salminen the biggest possible lie about life, is still a tight spot. “The biggest speaking role I’ve ever had to do.”
After a hot summer, returning to work has been a more difficult process than usual. Salminen tells how she has been more grumpy than usual with her loved ones after she started to dig out the feelings of the role in herself.
“The longer you do this work, the more difficult it becomes. At worst, the threshold for irritation is quite low. Thousands of sketches fly into the trash!”
“I guess Pablo Picasso is the only one who could say: I don’t seek, I find!”
“You have to let things go through the actor, and you can’t reject the emotions that have been aroused, you just have to accept them,” Salminen says.
“And they must also be allowed to come out,” Forssell adds.
The death of a merchant traveller is not only tragic but also comical, and it also features a family pattern that is even more familiar to Finns, where the lie of life is so great that it is passed directly on to the next generation.
“A terribly true and topical play. Nothing in it is outdated, neither human nor plot politics,” Forssell says of the classic, which was premiered by Elia Kazan in 1949 at the Morosco Theatre in New York.
“Maybe it’s because Finland is the most American country in the world,” Salminen adds.
Willy Loman’s tragic, or should I say heroic death, is like straight out of a small news item in a Finnish newspaper. The brand of the car is just no longer Studebaker!

New Finnish translation
uses modern language

The play’s Willy lives in many different realities at the same time with his sample bags. In Salminen’s opinion, the entire play actually takes place in Willy’s head, in his fantasies, delusions and flashbacks that spring up from his memory. The lie is so true that Willy himself believes it, and forces others to believe it too. Linda, the mother of the family, is the only one who sees what is really happening, but she endures.
“This is like any other Finnish family that stays together with the support of the mother,” Salminen says.
Forssell also sees bolder approaches in the silenced mother. “When a mother calls her son a woman-catching slacker, that’s a pretty strong statement.”
The new modern Finnish translation of the play has been made by Juha Siltanen, whose colloquial language closely follows the likeness of the minds of different people.
“The work was very difficult, but I’m finally happy with the result,” says Siltanen, who tested his turn in the exercises.
Arthur Miller, 84, who still works in the theatre, has been invited to the premiere. Maybe he’ll end up in Helsinki?

Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Merchant Traveller premieres on the big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre on 8 October. Directed by Reko Lundan.