Review: Jumala on kauneus

The play God is Beauty by Smeds and the students of the Theatre Academy glows with sensuality and defiance Paavo

Rintala added a comment at the beginning of his book God is Beauty (1959): “To those who know the person I had in mind from the following, I would like to point out that this work is not a biography or even intended as a biographical novel. This is a novel about experiencing beauty.” The model for those who experienced the beauty of Rintala’s work was the painter Vilho Lampi (1898–1936), who painted the plains of Liminka and its people as well as strong self-portraits, and who experimented with many different painting styles during his short career.

Kristian Smeds’ stage version of the same name premiered already in 2000 at Teatteri Takomo, and later in 2008 at the Finnish National Theatre, the version of which I also saw. At that time, there were five Vilhos on stage, who mainly worked alone. Now, the Helsinki City Theatre’s version is completely different. In it, the artist’s lonely work is punctuated by strong crowd scenes. The wall between the stage and the auditorium is also broken and the viewer is invited closer to the performance.

The role of the artist varies between third-year students at the Theatre Academy, with whom Kristian Smeds has worked for three years. The events will be accompanied by an orchestra, whose instruments the same students will pick up. Music is not a background, but an integral part of the mental landscape. New scenes slide onto the remnants left behind by the previous one, from which the actors begin to build a new image. We see the pounding of a sleeper, laundry, stage dances, cutting an ice cube and chopping cabbage heads. Working with all the material and moving the troops requires a strong physical effort, and the performance offers almost acrobatic virtuosity.

The artist in the play introduces himself as Vilho, but I interpret all Vilhos in general as an artist whose creative process includes searching for and finding different worlds in his longing for divine beauty. The artist captures her interpretation on canvas, where it begins to live its own life as unique and unpredictable. However, the journey into those worlds leaves the painter an outsider, a stranger. For example, he looks at the perfection of nature in the winter frost and states that everything is in place in nature, “only man crackles in it, there is too much in the landscape”. On his trip to Paris, the artist is so enchanted by Vermeer’s work that “the Finnish soul tilts”. And that scene is taken to its uncontrollably funny ending, where the actors roll in the grip of laughter.

Antti Lahti’s choreography perfectly highlights the different ways in which individuals react, and on the other hand, the rushing power of the masses. At times, the atmosphere is devout and the movement is gentle, the crowd disperses around the space, humming, only to tear out a new world as their bodies twist painfully. The end result is extremely intense, absolutely captivating. The young cast is wonderfully inside the text, and there is a brutal amount of skill on stage.