Review: Ne kahdeksan valittua
One more story from the last war
When it feels like everything possible has already been whipped up on stage many times since our country’s last war, one waits with a little doubt for the play The Eight Chosen Beginnings written by Heikki Ylikangas at the Helsinki City Theatre.
The suspicion is unfounded. There is still a perspective that interests me. The text of Elina Sana’s controversial book Luovuetut pohjantudu tackles a painful topic: Why did Finland extradite refugee Jews to German concentration camps in 1942?
The decisions of Risto Ryti, Minister of the Interior Toivo Horell and Arno Anthon, the head of the state’s secret police, are examined under Germany’s pressure policy: grain will come if refugees are handed over.
The play is mainly talk and analysis of the situation, the decision-makers’ pushing in the face of a difficult situation, and therefore nothing dramatically interesting is created on stage. The facts are tackled with a one-to-one method, leaving no room for an interpretative structure.
Small people and big decisions
The play does not point the finger at the culprits, but unravels the complex mess in which no Finnish politician feels safe.
The German visitors Himmler and Müller are mainly described as bootleggers whose pomposity verges on a stereotype.
Lehto’s guidance is progressing intensively. The oppressive atmosphere of Risto Ryti’s studio is thrown over everything. Decision-makers make their decisions without real alternatives.
People talk about those who have been handed over, but they do not take centre stage in the performance. They are an absent force that invisibly breaks spines.
The Soviet soldier dropped in the Vihti region draws Hella Wuolijoki with him to the events. In all her haughtiness, Madame Wuolijoki is one of the lightening elements of the play.
Mimmi Resman’s huge wall, which cuts through the entire rotating stage, seems to be throwing characters like marionettes as it moves. Director Milko Lehto has solved many departures from the stage so that the characters step into the spotlight from the frantically changing stage right in front of the first row of spectators – as if to be judged.
The dense atmosphere of the stage
Hannu Lauri plays Risto Ryti in a modest but cruelly internalized way. The unsmiling man knows that the fate of the kingdom is in his hands.
Kari Mattila’s head of Valpo is the opposite of the president: a man engaged in an unbearable internal struggle snorts with the power of drunken drinks. The broken man in the prison scene at the end is nothing but jelly, a poor man who surrenders to being kicked.
Aarno Sulkanen gives one of the play’s most impressive performances as a representative of the Jewish community in Helsinki. The news of the handovers has shaken the man’s faith upstairs. Sulkanen sweats pain and lives the character’s conflicting emotions with his whole body. As his wife, Tiia Louste is a character who holds the reins tightly.
Vuokko Hovatta’s young spy Kerttu Nuorteva is full of her glow to the point of suffocation. Paavo Kastari, the head of the Army Control Department, played brilliantly by Jari Pehkonen, falls in love with his guardian sentenced to death and opens up a whole new perspective on the relationship between the prisoner and the captors.
The actors do a steady job throughout: Heikki Sankari as the Minister of the Interior, Matti Olavi Ranin as the heavy-handed lieutenant of Valpo, Jouko Klemettilä as Himmler, Jyrki Kovaleff as the head of the Gestapo and Helena Haaranen as the only refugee Jew who opposes the imprisonment of her husband.
The eight selected continue the series, which at the Helsinki City Theatre has been preceded by Paavo Haavikko’s The Oar and Brita and Hitler’s Umbrella and David Edgar’s Albert Speer.
Humanly, the text is interesting. However, the simple form of the plot play does not provide such theatrical tools that you can chew on them for a long time.