Review: Katrina

Many accurate snapshots in a rich and touching musical

On Wednesday, the play Katrina premiered at Lilla Teatern.  The play about a strong woman’s fate in the Åland archipelago is characterized by playfulness, creative joy and imagination.

Katrina at the Little Theatre is a stormy woman’s fate about both internal and external compulsion to be strong and endure, and yet the performance is packed with humour. A four-woman strong ensemble is more than enough to create a lively musical where there is always something going on on stage. Costumes, set design, music, lighting and acting together create a simple and stylised, but rich and touching whole.

A pair of large black leather boots depicts a noisy sea captain, an axe chop in a wooden thigh depicts a birth, a broom serves as a rat and a black vest with shiny buttons represents the adult son who returns to his poor home with money in his pocket.

Jakob Höglund’s direction is once again characterized by playfulness, creativity and imagination. Together with set designer, prop designer and puppeteer Heini Maaranen, costume designer Samu-Jussi Koski, lighting designer Tobias Lönnquist and the entire versatile working group, he tells the gripping story of Katrina, the brave woman who stubbornly and proudly refuses to bow to the authorities.

Read the full review here (behind a paywall)