Review: Grönholms metod

Interview comedy trump card at Lillan

After the previous play, Bebbe Ahlfors ́ 1945, Lilla Teatern has once again picked a trump card from the deck when they chose to stage the Catalan Jordi Galcerans Grönholm’s Method, a comedy about a workplace interview from the higher school. The sometimes infected debate about the incorporation of Lilla Teatern with the Helsinki City Theatre seems unnecessary in this light. Good plays in Swedish are what the audience has been looking for – and has received, at least so far.

Grönholm’s method is in many ways a play with all the hallmarks of a hit. It is unusually well written, it is full of charged lines, of surprises and twists, which are the hallmark of a good play overall.
But it’s definitely not a traditional boulevard comedy, it’s also exciting and unusual in that it has already been shown in Helsinki before Thursday’s premiere Lillan. This happened a year ago at the Theatre Academy’s Festival of Modern European Drama, when Grönholm’s method
was performed with four of the fourth-year Swedish students under the direction of Anna Allgulin. Later this spring, she will also be the director of the Russian comedy The Son at Klockriketeatern.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that since I happened to see the performance last year, I was now offered the opportunity to compare the directing work in two otherwise identical plays for the first time. Where Grönholm’s method at the Theatre Academy had more of the character of a thriller with strong emotional outbursts as a spice, the emphasis at Lilla Teatern is on comedy and strong ensemble playing. Four people are grinding against each other for a few hours in the meeting room in a
skyscraper in Barcelona in a subsidiary of a large Swedish company. It’s time for the decisive job interview for a top post where the so-called The Gröholm method is used.

Without revealing more about the plot, an increasingly burlesque story follows that, on the terms of comedy and with great depth of sharpness, shows how far man is willing to humiliate himself for the sake of financial gain. At the same time, the play appears as an intricate game between truth and lies and as a clever puzzle with only new pieces, where nothing is as it seems.

Precise ensemble playing

The ensemble playing between Jonna Järnefelt, Carl-Kristian Rundman, Sampo Sarkola and Pekka Strang does not limp for a second, it heats up and oil is poured on the waves with exactly the right timing, you amuse and worry, so everything feels engaging and real. If Jonna Järnefelt plays a cold-heartedly effective role as the calculating geek in the middle of her career, Sampo Sarkola’s role is the sympathetic one
humanities. Carl-Kristian Rundman responds to the evening’s most formidable outburst at the beginning of the play as the vaguely self-conscious aspiring director who, with his buff body language and his half-stupid lines, draws down long bursts of laughter. Pekka Strang’s increasingly agitated character becomes the play’s primus engine towards the end when the chaos in the meeting room reaches its full climax.

Grönholm’s method is a play that shows how a good story should be drawn with theatre as a medium. It has a high entertainment value, but it is not without its thorns against abuse of power in general and against power corruption in the business world in particular.

EGIL GREEN