Review: Lastenkutsut

Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen…

Mauno Koivisto, in camouflage uniform, rumbles with his rapid-fire rifle among the crystal chandeliers and gilded chairs of Tamminiemi at Urho Kekkonen’s 100th birthday reception.

Geez! The crisis has struck, NATO has already taken over Finland’s ro-ro ships! What to do? Koivisto, a man of action, crashes into the yard with his gun. “It has always been in the yard like a snowman,” Kekkonen growls.

But the current rulers, Prime Minister Lipponen and President Halonen, are arguing about who has more important power and who is crying for whom.

The crisis doesn’t make sense, but at the birthday party, there is a competition to see whose knee the glasses hang on the knee most reminiscent of Kekkonen. No one is better than Kekkonen himself.

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In the front row sits Paavo Lipponen and his wife. Yes, they laugh. Also when Mikko Kivinen as Lipponen marches in in an Austrian national breech uniform.

We have not had any political travesties, or antics, to the point of crowding. Finns do not engage in day-to-day politics in the theatre. Who in a democracy would mock the competent leadership of a nation?

The group theatre did send Kekkonen to Tamminiemi to put his dropper bottle in the 80s, and in the 90s at the National Theatre, Jouko Turkka eagerly got to grips with both Kekkonen and the other minister-Paavo, Väyrynen , in his play The President’s Dementia .

The farcist is now the third Paavo, Haavikko, who has diligently engaged in the study of the Kekkos (republic) and in many works.

Children’s Party, directed by Leena Uotila , is a three-quarter of an hour prank production of the Helsinki City Theatre, which will be performed four times in Tamminiemi: the last performances will be on 24 September.

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Haavikko’s familiarly secretive aphorism halves are mixed with sheer wooden leg jokes. The statue is so corny that it makes you laugh at times: Antti Litja’s Turku dialect and loose eyebrows, Heikki Nousiainen’s manic, slyly mumbling Kekkonen.

Miitta Sorvali’s handsome Anita Hallama in an evening dress cleans the parquet floors and commands the entourage, Leena Uotila is a restrained, fierce, irritable first lady. Asko Sarkola is concerned as an adjutant.

In the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper , the genuine Lipponen considered the proposal “absolutely excellent”: in his opinion, it went to “the heart of the matter, the analysis of power”, and the indivisibility of presidential power.

The location is good: the monarch’s museum-housed stage adds considerable value to the text. But when you leave the gate, you wonder if politicians need to be parodied. Who said they do it themselves.