Review: Lainapeite ja lyhyttavaraa

HERALA AND NOPOLA MEET IN AN EXHILARATING STAGE SHOW

The characters Eila and Rampe created by Sinikka Nopola – those lively reserved pensioners from Pirkkala – have risen spectacularly to theatre stages in different parts of the country.

The characters have a strange universality. Nopola, who is also known as a children’s author, is also a skilled interpreter of his generation.


Heidi Herala, who is roughly in the same age group as Nopola, makes use of this side of the author in her one-woman performance Lainapeite ja korttavaraa (Borrowed Blanket and Short Goods).

Of course, there is room for Eila and Rampe’s coffee hoarding, but Herala is at her best when she photographs a forty-year-old official arriving alone at the restaurant in the opening number of the evening. Similarly, when considering the essence of language in stories that deal with declarations of love sent as text messages and the use of words, i.e. and specifically.

On this basis, a handsome entity would certainly have been created, if Herala did not want to showcase her skills more widely. And that’s okay. Herala has the ability to take control of both the stage and the audience.

Accompanied by Tuomas Kesälä, Herala will perform some poems by Pirkko Jaakola and Vesa Tapio Valo composed by Marjatta Mertähti and Iiro Ollila. The choices are exciting, even though Herala does not reach the same hair-raising ecstasy with which she has previously interpreted, for example, old German cabaret songs.

Towards the end of the evening, Herala takes on the roles of a stripper and a Caribbean brothel hostess, and manages to make the laughs go in them as well.

In its closing issue, Herala creates a fine synthesis of the miracle of life with the story of the birth of a child by Kari Hotakainen .