Review: Everstinna

Colonel, Helsinki City Theatre

The floor of the Helsinki City Theatre’s small stage is covered with reindeer hides, there is a swamp and a hanger, and only a few pieces of furniture. And there is only one actor on stage for two hours, HEIDI HERALA.

A play based on Rosa Liksom’s novel Colonel Susanna Airaksinen, dramatised and directed by Colonel Susanna Airaksinen, is underway, and it has the same name as the novel. The story is based on the colourful life of the real colonel and writer Annikki Kariniemi.

The play’s Colonel is Heidi Herala, who achieves the performance of a lifetime in her role. What energy, control of the situation, competence, enthusiasm, mastery of the dialect, love for performance and the character! At the age of 59, the actor is at the peak of his career, and the viewer is left with a feeling of where he still has time.

The Colonel’s story is very exceptional in every way. The adult woman recalls falling in love with a 32-year-old colonel when she was four years old. The colonel was at his home as a guest of his father, an officer. There is a long way to go before the colonel takes his poetry girl, his mistress, to get married. But everything changes after marriage.

The colonel’s arbitrariness, violence, selfishness and ruthlessness have no limits whatsoever. His wife is worth nothing to him – not even though she has already achieved fame as a writer. When the colonel regains her freedom, she gets a job as a teacher and continues writing. His decision to reorganize his life is as intense and eccentric as his relationship with the colonel. Now the object of love is Taisto, a general worker twenty years younger, with whom the Colonel even marries.

The play is full of real people from Finnish history, whom the Colonel (Annikki Kariniemi) has met alongside the Colonel. The Colonel’s role model is Oiva Willamo. Descriptions of important people are not always very flattering.

Heidi Herala tells all this with fervor and power. Music (Johanna Puuperä), set design and costumes (Vilma Mattila) and lights (Vesa Ellilä) make the performance a unique whole.

For once, it was easy to be among the first to stand up and applaud the actor and the other creators.