Review: Fanny ja Alexander

Westerberg’s Fanny and Alexander is an autumn event

Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander has not been able to avoid seeing and you would think it would be very familiar, but the performance at the Helsinki City Theatre is still surprising. It seduces the viewer from the first moment, pulsates with the abundance of the Ekdahl family and transports you far into the dark to rise to look at the world with hope, and manages to carry its duration of well over three hours.

Paavo Westerberg has written and directed his version based on Bergman’s novel, and in its early stages, the viewer is encouraged to interpret what they see as the nesting of different worlds. Within the big world, there are always smaller worlds that spin on their own tracks, touching each other and sometimes bumping each other.

The life of Ekdahl’s well-to-do family includes culture and a lively social life, which the children are free to follow. The life of the parents, played by Pekka Huotari and Anna-Maija Tuokko, with its partying, drinking and cheating, gets its own interpretations in the minds of children.

Alexander examines the projector he received as a Christmas present and admires the magical power of the spotlight it casts, the image in which isolated events are captured. And the viewer gets to witness those captured moments. They glide onto the stage in a stream with possessed rhythm and immersion, the seamless work of the ensemble with the entire stage apparatus.

Antti Mattila’s set design opens and closes into many spaces in the lap of William Iles‘ skilful lighting that creates contrasts and blends. On stage, time is partly set in Bergman’s early 1900s, but the concept of time is open to interpretation. The children walk around in their hoodies and t-shirts linked to the 2000s, and at the Ekdahls’ parties, they go in a row.

At the beginning of the play, when Fanny and Alexander sneak into the second row of the auditorium to watch what is happening around them, they are children who are almost ecstatic watching the world go by. When the same duo steps onto the stage after the intermission, not much time has passed, but something is fundamentally different, something has been broken. The children marched in a line of military joy, reined in by instructions and rules.

The rich stage has changed since the death of his father and his mother’s marriage to Bishop Vergerus (Eero Aho). An empty, supervised, dreary space reveals everything. A life filled with fear of punishment surrounds both the children and the mother. Aho makes a chilling bishop and Tuokko a harrowing mother Emilie.

From the very first moments, it is clear that Olavi Uusivirta will play a memorable role as Alexander. Every gesture, expression and trajectory of movement is that of an intensely observing little boy. Every clever remark is at the same time arrogant, but still honestly wise. And Alexander’s story of the ghost, frightened by the maid of the bishop’s manor, is boisterously arrogant. Together with her little sister Fanny (Elena Leeve), the giggling moments make the audience shudder and the moments of fear share the horror. The love that sparkles between the siblings is touching, without sweetness, their shared terror is black and deep.

On stage, we are not only watching Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander family drama with its themes of good and evil, but the warp of the performance is interwoven with more distant colours, echoes of different cultures. Sanna Salmenkallio’s music draws on the works of Bergman’s favourite composer Bach, as well as Ukrainian synagogue melody and the strong tones of electronic music.

The big family celebration in the final scene, where the babies of two women who have been through a lot are baptized, is like a sample of willpower, zest for life and tolerance. Its liberated, warm atmosphere communicates the possibility of a different future.

Theatre as an art form is part of the text of the performance, as the Ekdahls have their own theatre company. In addition, an interesting link opens to a play performed elsewhere. Alexander plays Hamlet’s lines, and his actor Olavi Uusivirta plays the role of Hamlet in the performance that premiered at the National Theatre last spring.