Review: Everstinna

Theatre review: To love, to suffer but not to forget – Heidi Herala in a frenzy at the Helsinki City Theatre’s The Colonel’s Sister

At the outset, it must be said that The Colonel at the Helsinki City Theatre should not be viewed on a factual basis, as a biographical drama. One person’s life, many, can fit into it, and there is also a factual basis, but it is first and foremost a fiction about the life of a woman from Lapland who has been through a lot. Just like Rosa Liksom’s novel, which director Susanna Airaksinen has made into a functional adaptation.

Liksom seemed visibly moved as she hugged director and actress Heidi Herala at the final thanks of the premiere of The Colonel. He had given the working group free rein to make an adaptation of his novel, and he certainly wasn’t disappointed.

The first audience, who gave a standing ovation to Herala and co., was not disappointed either. The actor’s little over two hours of hustle and bustle with the wild text was an impressive and handsomely accomplished effort.

Susanna Airaksinen’s directorial work, which is meritorious in itself, has three elements, load-bearing structures that give it a strong foundation. They and they are Heidi Herala, Vesa Ellilä’s lighting design and Johanna Puuperä’s sound design. With good teamwork, a performance has been created that cannot really be talked about “just” as a monologue. On the small stage of the City Theatre, a polyphonic one-woman theatre performance will now be seen.

Forget Kariniemi

Rosa Liksom’s novel already offers structurally excellent conditions for adapting it to be performed by one person, although other alternatives have also been discussed (see the author interview in Demokrat issue 17/2019). The life cycle is not spread to the stage as a large chronology, but the protagonist of the story rewinds his eventful and rough life in his old age in his cottage in Lapland, which has been given its colourful shades by Lapland, wars, ideologies, husband and son – the latter both spouses.

The man is the colonel with whom the intense and ultimately hellish marriage has left the protagonist with a “title” by which we know him exclusively. Neither the Colonel, nor the Colonel, has any other names in the novel or on the stage. Their historical backgrounds are not explained in the programme either.

In any case, the story of the protagonist of Liksom’s book follows the wild life of the Lapland writer Annikki Kariniemi , which included his youthful fascination with fascist ideas and his twenty-year marriage at a very young age to the Nazi-minded Jaeger Colonel Oiva Willamo . After the marriage ended, due to the colonel’s psychotic violence, Kariniemi retired to work as a teacher in his native Lapland, where he found a life partner who was more than 20 years younger than him or a budding man. Kariniemi’s prolific career as a writer did not blossom until he was released from Willamo in the 1960s, and his key novel was Anatomy of a Marriage in 1968, which explored a heated and chilling relationship.

But as Paavo Haavikko said as the opening words of the Iron Age , which drew on Kalevala stories, “forget the Kalevala”, let it be said in the context of the stage production of The Colonel: forget Kariniemi.

Extreme evil, without indulgence

Airaksinen has picked out the most effective elements from Liksom’s novel for stage purposes, which have resulted in a well-progressing drama. Perhaps the brighter childhood years of the protagonist described in the book could have been highlighted even more, in which case the contrast with the post-war years would have been even sharper.

It’s rough even now. Embittered by the defeat of the war and the collapse of the nascent world power of the Third Reich, the colonel transforms into a monster who vents his hatred on his wife. The result is horrifying (even though it is hardly visible from the outside when the colonel locks his spouse so that the signs of violence do not reach the eyes of outsiders), extreme physical and mental violence. The end point is the Colonel’s pregnancy, which the Colonel does not digest, but kicks his wife into a miscarriage.

The stage implementation is in no way full of violence, and it would be quite difficult when there is only one person on stage. Heidi Herala shows her own ability to stretch when in one scene she is both a uniformed torturer and a victim who is beaten by a colonel with his belt.

The end of the performance goes a bit fast-forward, leaving the Colonel’s happier days less to deal with and her career as a writer really only a short acknowledgment. The decision has certainly been regulated by the laws of drama, of course, the ecstasy of fascist ideas or the hell of relationships gives off more interesting drama material than writing nature and children’s books and working as a teacher.

The soloist gets to shine

Even though Heidi Herala is physically alone on stage from start to finish, the performance is very multifaceted throughout. Vesa Ellilä’s all-around impressive lights and, above all, shadows create illusions of approaching people, and Johanna Puuperä’s insightful sound design even creates crowd scenes, such as the summer meeting of the “blackshirts”, in which the protagonist participates at a young age (and loses her virginity as a result of rape). The archive tapes feature the powerful men of both the Third Reich and the Finnish War era. The Colonel is also present on stage as a voice (voiced by Santeri Kinnunen), but not in direct dialogue with the Colonel, but in her memories, charming and terrifying.

The voice actors Kinnunen and Rauno Ahonen (e.g. father and also mental hospital doctor Vompakti, read: Konrad von Bagh) are like a suitably unobtrusive rhythm group that gives the soloist a foundation and room to shine. That’s what Heidi Herala really does. The role is a tough piece already as a word processing challenge. There is a lot of text, and the language is something completely different from what Herala learned to speak in her childhood in her home and yards in Vallila, Helsinki. The lush dialect of the Torne River Valley, known as our language, gives the role its own extra boost, but it should be listened to as the protagonist’s mother tongue and spoken language, not in a sense of humour.

Herala is also physically tough in the role of the Colonel. She dances full of joy in many scenes, she bounces in the swamps of Lapland in the frenzy of youth and Lapland’s nature. The Colonel is also seen changing clothes on the fly for a parade party. And finally, rolling on the stage floor, beaten and in pain. The theatre space is in full use, while the Colonel still swings to the steps of the auditorium to praise the wonders of fascism and throws German candies to the audience in ecstasy.

Standing ovations are easily taken in theatres these days, sometimes even in rather flimsy performances, but Heidi Herala’s hard work as the Colonel is of such a magnitude that it’s worth taking your ass off the bench.