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Bertolt Brecht entertains in the new millennium
Esko Salminen is edible as the host of Puntila
Bertolt Brecht, Hella Wuolijoki: The Master of Puntila and His Servant Matti. Helsinki City Theatre, large stage. Translated by Elvi Sinervo, revised translation, texts and songs by Liisa Ryömä, directed by Kurt Nuotio, music by Jukka Linkola, set design by Hannu Lindholm, costumes by Maija Pekkanen, lighting by Kari Leppälä, sound by Mauri Siirala and Antero Mansikka. Cast: Esko Salminen, Marika Parkkomäki, Martti Suosalo, Jouko Klemettilä, Markku Huhtamo, Seppo Maijala, Heidi Herala, Pekka Huotari, Eija Vilpas, Ulla Tapaninen, Riitta Havukainen, Aino Seppo and Matti Olavi Ranin.
I had to understand that one fine day it would also be Esko Salminen’s turn to climb the Hattelmala ridge to praise the sweetness of summery Häme, to count his cows, forests and other things he owned. Now that day has come. Esko Salminen, who is drunk with his character, fulfils all expectations from edge to edge in the current version of Puntila at the Helsinki City Theatre. He makes his mighty master with the nobility and cunning of a prince as well as with the joviality of a man of the people.
Esko Salminen
Puntila is even an edible delicacy to the extent that anything goes. You also have to like the sober, class-conscious, greedy capitalist, oppressor of his employees and tyrant of his own family, precisely because that lane is played by Esko Salminen. That’s the kind of actor he is, a big man full of agility, energy, hilarity, charm and absolute professionalism. All of this is also in use and on display in the performance of Brecht-Wuolijoki’s The Master of Puntila and His Servant Matti, directed by Kurt Nuotio.
Isn’t there something
fly out the window in this way with the bathwater from the critical class consciousness related to Brecht’s contribution? Yes, it flies, something, but not everything. The decisive factor is that Martti Suosalo brings to the performance a fully equal counterforce to the jovial Salminen’s embrace of the world. Suosalo’s sarcastic chuckles, sharp lines, self-conscious isolation of his appearance skilfully advance the subject itself. Suosalo sharpens what Salminen is shaving. Thanks to Suosalo, Helsinki City Theatre’s Puntila is not a one-man show, although it leans a little in that direction. However, the controlled cooperation between the two is crucial.
I’m not going to make a mistake
to reminisce about what all this was like when Brechtianism last took over the theatrical land of thick fields. After all, the invasion at that time also included a lot of dry orthodoxy, which it is time to get rid of. However, I can say that in the new millennium everything will be different, including Puntila in the bits of a large and apparently media-conscious theatre event. The event was already a topic at the premiere and the number of celebrities rarely seen in the theatre was considerable. Of course, it doesn’t matter. It’s good when everyone goes to the theatre. I also don’t think that Kurt Nuotio’s direction with any particular greed aimed to serve the god of easily swallowed pleasures, but that, too, was what it was all about, a kind of obligations of an entertainment arena, in the end.
Kurt Nuotion
Puntila is like a great Finnish summer party, including the set design of potato fields, birches, lakes and sunset conjured up by set designer Hannu Lindholm. Not forgetting the slight swing of the hems found in the dresses designed by Maija Pekkanen. In any case, the ironic and the grotesque are also beautiful in this interpretation. The eye rests. Also rest the ear. Jukka Linkola has composed the sweetness of Puntila’s caressing melodies, devoid of all the dominance of the Brecht tradition, with folk music associations, not forgetting the Metro Girls. The music is also realised almost as a death blow to everything that used to be done in the care of a well-played and excellently impressive female orchestra and controlled sing-alongs.
So a lot
new music? Yes, and plenty of other things that are part of a proper evening: dancing, drinking booze, drunken humour, girls and boys competing and the relevant play, that is, Brecht’s and Wuolijoki’s Puntila. It is precisely as the implementer of Puntila that the City Theatre’s sweet set-up is more than difficult at first. The drunken jokes of the first moments don’t carry through, they are in a flat space and even made by Esko Salminen they are clichéd tinkering. The play itself doesn’t get off the ground, not at all. Musical expansions do not help either, but rather lead in a log river-like direction. Let’s be around the bush theater for a moment.
However, it is a pleasure
to say that when the performance now and then and in the second half really starts to interpret the text itself, the whole becomes a debating, if somewhat self-evident, debating theatre. Puntila is a drama of characters and caricatures. Kurt Nuotio and his actors survive this department brilliantly.
Absolutely wonderful
it would be, for example, Marika Parkkomäki’s Eve, if the actress didn’t scream quite as much in her role as she did in the premiere. In any case, Marika Parkkomäki is Puntila’s daughter to the last, a wonderful seductress, but also a haughty commander and, in my opinion, a touching modern person when admitting defeat in the final stages. The diplomat played by Jouko Klemettilä, Eeva’s fiancé candidate, perfect in her horror, is also a theatrical delicacy. So is Heidi Herala’s jazzy roaster with her eternal mushroom recipes, an enchantingly monstrous prankster.
Markku Huhtamo
and especially Seppo Maijala tear up their male figures uninhibitedly, and of course also Eija Vilpas, Ulla Tapaninen and Riitta Havukainen Puntila’s ever-lovely fiancées. Pekka Huotari is a steady stubborn scoundrel as the punikki-Surkkala, a silent oppressed man, Aino Seppo as Fiina, Puntila’s states-wise servant, an actor of accurate observations, and Matti Olavi Ranin as a convincing scoundrel with a lung disease. What’s funniest is that the cast of the large institutional theatre, not forgetting the characters on the sidelines, seems to be doing their Puntila with joy. It promises a long life for the novelty.
At the beginning of the presentation
The choir assures the audience ironically and wisely, but in the end even truthfully, that “we will not feed you wisdom”. That is how times have indeed changed. In this performance, the Brechtianism of the new millennium is wonderfully executed, spectacular and cheerful theatrical entertainment. So, did the child fly out of the window with the bathwater after all?