Review: Toinen pullo cavaa
Theatre review: Another bottle of cava continues naturally about the friendship of the wonderful quartet
Another bottle of cava returns to the charming foursome of women in the warmth of Portugal. The comedy on the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre draws on a lifelong friendship that does not fall into bumps.
A Bottle of Cava and the Sun, which delighted on the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre two years ago, has fortunately now received an (independent) sequel, again from the sharp pen of Helena Anttonen. In the performance, it feels like meeting an old group of friends after a long time, and luckily nothing has changed. Except that this group of friends will be on stage and there will be changes, even big ones. Still, friendship doesn’t disappear anywhere.
Another bottle of cava returns to Anita (Eija Vilpas), Inka (Heidi Herala), Tuulia (Aino Seppo) and Vonne (Jaana Saarinen), when the big dream of the previous play has come true and the four friends have been living in an art residency in Portugal for a while. The magnificent old house has been renovated with a lot of money and it should be time to spend his retirement days in paradise.
However, the dream has turned into an everyday life with more money worries than great art creation. Of the group, only Tuulia has actually found her own path, while the others are still in pain. Relations start to get tense when everyone doesn’t take care of their own business. And how does the dynamic change when Anita meets Lasse (Eero Saarinen), who turns out to be a bit of an auervaara online, and Tuulia’s grandson Sami ( Joel Hirvonen, who throws juicy one-liners) wants to live in a “nunnery” for free?
It’s wonderful to see a lot of competent and mature women on stage who talk to each other about more than just men. The four smoothly slip into friends, whose interaction is natural and their performance is immediate. The opportunity to shine naturally passes from one actor to another, and this time it is first and foremost Heidi Herala’s turn to tear it up a bit.
In accordance with the working recipe seen in the first part, there is plenty of hilarious humour in this play as well, but at times there are also serious, even deadly serious ones. Despite one’s age, one’s own mortality feels distant as long as the previous generation is alive. Parents are a wall behind which children cannot see death, as Vonne sums up. What about when that wall falls?