Review: Herra Puntila ja hänen renkinsä Matti
Brecht goes rillumarei
During the intermission of the premiere at the Helsinki City Theatre, I pointed out to my colleague that there seemed to be a relentless attempt to set a new world record in Brechtian alienation. He countered by stating that Kari Heiskanen is in his element in such endeavours.
The folk comedy “Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti”, born in the 1940s from the shared ideas and pens of Hella Wuolijoki and Bertolt Brecht, which delves into the oddities of capitalism, is a most suitable playground for a director like Kari Heiskanen. He always seems to enjoy mixing classic conventions with his own crazy visions. When he has also been able to use the big stage of the City Theatre, it will be on a “drive or die” basis. The space is open all the way to the rear wall, and the revolving stage is full throttle from the start.
Dualistic cartridge
In the beginning, there was Hella Wuolijoki, who wrote the play “The Sawdust Princess” using the character traits of one of her husband’s relatives. Brecht, who fled to Finland during the World War years and stayed at the Marlebeck manor owned by Wuolijoki, refined the folk play into a comedy that was a notch more fierce and opinionated, in which the dualism of the nature of the rural community’s booze-drinking scumbag was shed light on in a new way.
The play’s drunken host has Matti as his driver, who is a little too wise, and who tends to get involved in other things than driving Mr. Puntila and rescuing him from trouble.
Among other things, to the project of marrying Puntila’s hot-headed daughter Eeva, in which the father has very opportunistic motives.
When drunk, Puntila is a good-natured, goofy cartridge type, the “father of bread”, but after surviving, he is a nasty exploitative bourgeois, frankly a complete dick.
Glorious indiscipline
Kari Heiskanen applies Brechtian theatrical doctrines so carelessly that even the most dogmatic Marxist-Leninists have something to hold on to. Brecht’s way of breaking the boundary between the stage and the audience, i.e. blurring the play and reality, is now realised to the power of five.
Brecht would probably hum in his grave if he could see the unruly direction in an insightful way. I’m not so sure about the Hella W.
The interpretation and execution come from the big stage to the audience’s lap. Pertti Sveholm, who plays Puntila, may, without warning, throw himself into Svenka, who is friends with the audience, and suddenly he may be going to continue drinking – not in the villages, but in the nearby Juttutuppa. Everyone is involved!
The other actors also flirt with the audience, and the stage men are involved in the flow of the performance in other ways than just in the process.
Sveholm is more than at home in this kind of role, where you can take turns getting angry and annoying. Anna-Riikka Rajanen, a specialist in energetic girl power types, brings some twists to Eeva Puntila’s character. This chick is not just subjected to agreed unions. Antti Timonen charms as a groom candidate, who is so familiarly called the departure secretary all the time. Such unmanly gestures and dough-like firmness are rarely available.
Anarchist time jumps and other unreal and irrelevant things are cultivated with such care that at times the viewer is exhausted by them. If you remember to keep the demands of more orthodox Brechtianism and traditional folk comedy at bay, you will still be left with a cheerful feeling of satiety.
In the shadow of the palm trees of Häme
In addition to his characteristic carnivalism and witty eye for the situation, the director’s approach also has self-irony, as Marx and other isms of that direction have been his guiding star in the wild years of the 1970s. That is why it is delightful to see how unfrowned Heiskanen in his direction deals with the imagery of the play, Brechtian proletarism, or even the soundscape of the song movement of the 70s. However, mocking the political theatre of the time is more gentle than mean.
During his years as director of the City Theatre, Heiskanen has become one of the best at taking over the building’s main stage, and even without directing musicals. He’s pretty good at developing mass scenes – and they’re back on pace – but his collaboration with the visualizers is also usually on point.
The stage image, conjured up by Heiskanen’s trusted set designer Markku Hakuri, is as mischievous as the director’s approach to the text. The wide view is dominated by the Puntila sign, which occasionally gleams with flashy neon letters, but the most hilarious thing is how neoclassicism with its pillars meets the deliberately clumsy cardboard backdrop that conveys a message from the youth club stages. Rustic interiors are conspicuous by their absence, replaced by a forest of artificial palms, for example!
Costume designer Tiina Kaukanen has also been in high gear. The costumes are like a mix of flashes from a pride parade and a Senegalese market. The men’s shirts have rhythmic checkered and the ties are colourful. Unrestrained. A feast for the eyes.
To the ear, it is produced by the musical landscape created by Arttu Takalo, which is mainly drawn with percussion almost in the middle of the stage (in the premiere, the squeaker kiosk is hosted by Mongo Aaltonen).
Candy for the eyes and ears The Puntila implementation is across the board anyway. When Wuolijoki and Brecht’s play may no longer rattle very loudly as a text, it must be breathed into it somewhere. Heiskanen has pumped it up with the kind of big bellows with which the Brechtian prolemoralist comedy now meets the rillumar of the 2010s in a good way.