Review: Katrina

Sally Salminen’s Åland epic Katrina still feels relevant when it is resurrected as a musical almost a hundred years after it was written.

Jakob Höglund, who previously successfully directed Stormskärs Maja at Åbo Svenska Teater in 2015, once again does a good job and his Katrina becomes a very touching performance with only women on stage.

Emma Klingenberg impresses as Katrina, while all the other roles, most of them male roles, are performed by Aila Järvelä, Ulriikka Heikinheimo and Senni Valtonen, all of whom also play countless different instruments from kantele and violin to flutes, keyboards and percussion. Aila Järvelä’s folk-inspired music is thoroughly enjoyable and the quartet’s voices sound incredibly well together when they sing. In addition, they are one of the masters at evoking various bird sounds and other nature sounds.

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