Review: Riistapolku
Helsinki City Theatre’s Game Trail challenges the viewer to think – a tough subject force you to pedal through a minefield of strong emotions
The Game Trail by the German Franz Xaver Kroetz is a well-charged play. It has taken director Lauri Maijala and his troops into the middle of a minefield of strong emotions.
The play, which is based on real events, tells the story of the relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a 19-year-old young man and the tragic consequences of this relationship.
And Hanni in this story is not just a victim, but a strong-willed actor who turns a young man who is six years older than herself, but still very immature, into a cuddle almost the size of a man.
In the midst of the current grooming controversy, Kroetz’s play is pure dynamite in terms of its subject matter. Published in 1971, Riistapolku has of course been a difficult piece for theatre makers in the previous decades as well. It has only been staged in Finland twice before, even though Vesa Tapio Valo’s insightful Finnish translation has stood the test of time.
However, theatre has its means, and Kroetz’s method is downright rude distancing. The characters are written in such a way that it was difficult to feel any sympathy for any of the characters in the play.
In this respect, the Game Trail was a very enlightening experience for me. The so-called Brechtian conception of theatre is still alive and well for a reason, even though the ideology behind it has died and been buried as an idealistic utopia.
I assume that this method is a very demanding way of doing things for actors. But it is certainly also very rewarding. At least we viewers got to enjoy amazingly fine acting at Wednesday’s premiere.
Kroetz depicts the play’s relationships and family dynamics in a brutally realistic way. When people don’t have words and concepts to deal with the emotions that are bubbling up inside them, they are expressed through body language. Father Erwin (Risto Kaskilahti) uses his fists, daughter Hanni (Ella Mettänen) finally resorts to a shotgun.
On the Game Trail, they acted out with body language, and for example, the illusion created by Mettänen of a clumsy and defiant teenage girl in the role of Hanni was a perfect performance.
The Game Trail is a very demanding play also from the viewer’s point of view. In a play written in a very concise form, all scenes are key scenes.
Almost nothing is said about the backgrounds of the characters in the play. For the attentive viewer, the dynamics of the play’s characters’ relationships open up through insights.
A good example of this was the bar scene in which Franz (Paavo Kinnunen) introduces his girlfriend Hanni to his friend Dieter (Pekka Huotari). Huotari’s fine interpretation of the weak-talented Dieter also provides a framework for Franz’s character.
Maijala’s well-thought-out direction supported us viewers in these intellectual efforts. Maijala had left space between scenes for our viewers’ own insights. The performance had a good rhythm.
Antti Mattila’s set design, Kari Leppälä’s lights, and the soundscape designed by Aleksi Saura are good examples of how the stage space of the Helsinki City Theatre’s small stage is taken over.
Elina Kolehmainen’s costumes and stage furniture represented the era of the 70s with their details. For example, the green tiled floor in the family’s living room in the play was like a story delivered directly from the GDR Museum in Berlin.
The idealism of the previous decade, the 60s, was replaced in the 70s by a time of stagnation, when both clothes and ideas were ugly. This is also how I remember it, even though I myself lived through the most prosperous years of my youth in that decade.
The play’s working group also makes use of this aesthetic of ugliness. For example, at the beginning of the play, this effect is taken to almost surreal spheres with the help of Henri Karjalainen’s masks and lighting effects.
Kroetz got the subject for his play from a criminal case that took place in a small German town in 1967, where a 13-year-old girl and a 19-year-old young man who sexually abused her beat the girl’s father to death with a rifle.
If Riistapolku were to premiere now, it might be classified as documentary theatre.
Kroetz’s play and the film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinter based on the play were shown in the early 70s in a slightly different context than now. At that time, the Germans were just recovering from the horrors of World War II and the Nazi reign of terror.
In the play, the father of the play, Erwin, represents the generation born before the war, and the importance of the patriarchal family model was emphasized.
However, the basic theme of the play comes out clearly. Human relationships are everyday and mundane, but at the same time the most demanding challenge we can use our mental capacity for. The most complex of all are our relationships with our parents and children.
Maijala has written a very good shiver into the script about this core theme of the play. Viewers should familiarise themselves with the material on the City Theatre’s website before going to the theatre. There is no need to be afraid of plot revelations.
The Game Trail is a play that will probably bother at least the writer of this blog for a long time.