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Review: Albert Speer

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The Man Who Was Sentenced to Life

Helsinki City Theatre’s impressive theatre evening is complemented by a fine programme

Global responsibility also obliges the contemporary audience of Speer’s play

David Edgar: Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect. The big stage of the Helsinki City Theatre. Translated and directed by Kari Heiskanen,
set design by Hannu Lindholm, costumes by Maija Pekkanen, lighting by Mika Ijäs, sound by Eradj Nazimov, cast by Asko Sarkola, Kari Heiskanen, among others,
Pertti Sveholm, Leena Uotila, Jukka Voutilainen, Kristiina Elstelä, Yrjö Parjanne, Milka Ahlroth, Kari Mattila, Petri Johansson,
Carl-Kristian Rundman, Heikki Sankari, Aarno Sulkanen, Tommi Rantamäki, Pekka Huotari, Sami Uotila, Helena Haaranen, Vappu
Nalbantoglu and Henriikka Salo.

   
For many, many times, the auditorium of the Helsinki City Theatre’s main stage has not been sat so far forward out of desire
than in the press premiere of the Albert Speer play. This is the story I want to know, this performance to see.
   
There is a demand for interest.
   
The real attempts of recent years have been disappointments on the large side of the City Theatre, Brecht’s Puntila a kind of summer party at the City Theatre and The Death of a Salesman is strangely house-clean and fine theatre
Directed by Reko Lundán .
   
According to the City Theatre, Albert Speer is currently the most sought-after and best-selling play in the large-scale repertoire.
The subject, the story of Adolf Hitler and his court architect Albert Speer, is, of course, also interesting in its sensational nature, but it is also a question of the fact that the audience wants more than just musicals or musicals.
farce.
   

Best of all,
Kari Heiskanen’s directorial interpretation of David Edgar’s play is the most respectable theatre, ascetic but stylish, right down to the magnificent golden eagles of set designer Hannu Lindholm or the moving birch forests.
   
What I feared most was that Albert Speer is almost purely a theatre of two actors, two divas, but Star Wars is not
Not even born. They give space to each other and to others. Kari Heiskanen makes his Hitler stylishly sparse and precise, and
Asko Sarkola Speer equally minimally, but intensely and with conveyed feelings and thoughts.
   
Speer, who was freed from Spandau only at the beginning of the second act, is the charmer actor Asko Sarkola in his speech rhythm for a few moments,
But the underlining disappears with the new twists and turns of the story. We understand his Speer, almost more Speer of Sarkola than
Edgar’s equivalent. The presence of a human fills in the gaps in the text.
   

The play is written
so that the first act, the rise of Speer and the fall of the Third Reich are almost a mere prologue to the second act.
   
Only then does the work get to the point, its questions and answers, and only then does the viewer become part of the thematic part of the work.
basic problems. The story of a man who was sentenced to life begins. Later stages of Speer’s release from prison
are drama. The courtship phase of Hitler and Speer is mainly left to a few twists and turns.
   
Edgar can’t or doesn’t want to answer the question of why very thoroughly. Why did these two people find each other?
The text speaks of the glare of power and the unique opportunity of a 27-year-old unemployed architect to transform Germany into Germania.
But is that all? The enchantment of evil, which is also what this play is about, will ultimately remain a matter of faith.
   
Edgar has written his Hitler as a reasonably civilized and well-behaved gentleman, who only collapses when
everything else collapses as well. The text avoids monster clichés, which is of course allowed, but what gave rise to a long-lasting union is a bit
juiceless rumbling.
   
Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, which was seen on the small stage of the City Theatre on the axis of the central theme, responsibility, was, in my opinion, a better play, richer in human relationships and their effects on values and actions than David
Edgarin Albert Speer.
   

Or at least the beginning of it.
Indeed, Speer’s second act erupts into a powerful flow of drama and theatre as Speer moves towards his final truth.
I wonder why David Edgar has not attached fragments of his play from the apparently cleverly crafted defense speech,
who saved Speer from being hanged. The “let’s admit enough, but not the most important thing” trick worked on the judges in Nuremberg.
20 years of Spandau, and the poor thing remained.
   
After his release in 1966, Speer lived for another 15 years, succeeded as a writer and reminiscence, but was exhausted by his guilt as an insightful
as a human being.
   
I didn’t know, but I didn’t ask either,” says Speer in the play. Of course, the idea expands to the whole German people, even the world
and its wings carry to this day. Once again, the world is preparing for war. Can you afford not to know, not care,
The play asks us.
   

Speer says
his story, the so-called truth developed or developed during the Spandau years, to a priest, played by Pertti Sveholm in a somewhat pompous but present way.
   
In Heiskanen’s direction, the empty and wide space is filled skillfully in other ways as well, even though most of the roles are just stops by the wife
and the rest of the family. Speer’s actors also seem to be involved in the spirit of the expulsion of the interesting play.
   
A bigger role than the others has been given to Speer’s friend, colleague and conscience Rudolf Wolters, played by Jukka Voutilainen in a controlled and warm manner. In the small role of the wife, Leena Uotila impressively plays a woman consumed by life and time, as does Aarno Sulkanen as the Minister of Armaments who predicts defeat.
   

Milka Ahlroth’s Eva Braun is genuinely charming and saddening. The actress wears the beautiful outfits designed by Maija Pekkanen elegantly. Pekkanen’s role in the interpretation of empty space is decisive in other ways as well. Costume implementation
updates Speer clearly and spectacularly to his own epoch.
   
The City Theatre’s Albert Speer evening offers captivating and challenging theatre, and it doesn’t end when it’s over. Excellent
The 58-page handbook is a treasure, whether you are interested in the life of Albert Speer or in Jewish humour.
essence. The price is five euros. Excellent work from the Helsinki City Theatre.