Review: Liliom

Konna-Liliom must be loved

The Hungarian classic is purged into a ballad about the union of love and violence

What unites the Hungarian people of the beginning of the last century

Into the understanding of Finnish contemporary theatre in the Liliom classic? Nothing.
That is precisely why the Helsinki City Theatre’s interpretation is interesting, questionable and challenging.
     Ference Molnárin

the most famous play is relatively unknown in Finland, having only been performed a few times. The most well-known control versions are:

Eino Salmelainen

Directed in the 1930s and 40s at the People’s Theatre and the Tampere Workers’ Theatre.
The play is a peculiar depiction of the outskirts of the industrial revolution of the early 1900s in that it does not easily define its genre.
     


It can be interpreted

as a romantic story of Beauty and the Beast, or just as well as a realistic socio-political depiction that was raised by the symbolist currents of the time.
Add to this the addition of German theatrical expressionism to the traditions of interpretation of the play, and it is interesting to see how on earth the City Theatre will cope with the update of the play.
The big stage would have been downright tempting to include a romantic musical version of the play in the repertoire,

Richard Rodgers

and

Oscar


Hammerstein’s


The carousel.

It is currently being performed in Kouvola.
But now the text is the original play. And perhaps Hungary’s most renowned director, who is also well known in Finland, has been invited as a guest

Tamás Ascher, whose work we have previously seen at the National Theatre and the Swedish Theatre.
     


To everyone I have seen

Ascher’s directing is characterized by a unique ability to combine poetry and realism, to stick to the epoch, but at the same time to purify oneself and place oneself in a timeless vantage point.
This is also true

Liliom, which unfolds as an age-old love story, a natural symbiosis of good and evil.
Guidance is supported by

Zsolt Khellin

A bonk set behind the railway yard that fills the big stage in a grandiose but stylized way. We are not in poverty nature, even though the past is present.
The director’s sense of formation and ability are combined with the purification of acting. As a disproportionate main couple, we see excellent mutually supportive

Jonna Järnefeltin

and

Martti Suosalo.
     


Toad Lily

And the marriage of an innocent young girl gets a Finnish face, and it almost becomes a ballad.
Suosalo’s Liliom is an artist of life who does not pious or embellish, but is a holistic interpretation in its brutal absoluteness.
Järnefelt’s beautiful and pale Juli lives by Liliom’s side, resolutely subjugated by her own will. The hatred charged with love unfolds in their relationship in many forms and in theatrically insightful moments, even though the performance has not so far released all its emotional fields.
Life on the outskirts of the city is coloured by

Riitta Havukainen,

Kristiina Elstelä

and

Jari Pehkonen

interpretations that dismantle the abundance of life.
     


The biggest turnaround

Both in the story and in the interpretation, things happen after half-time, when we get to suicide heaven. The performance moves from a completely different genre, from the railway yard to a dream play led by heavenly forces.
The themes are comparable to those directed by Ascher

Nikolai Erdman’s

Satire

Long live the suicide.
The play becomes porous, ignites into satire, but unexpectedly ends in the blackest of black tragedy. Can the audience keep up? Why are they still laughing?
Liliom wastes her one-day search time on earth given to her by the gods, returning to her wife and daughter. The cycle of violence continues.
The play ends with an extremely topical and grim question: Why does Liliom hit? Violence as the flip side of love is the densification of Finnishness.