Review: Kirsikkatarha

Theatre review: A sharply drawn kindergarten for adults and children with hard luck

In the spirit of Mark Twain, Lauri Maijala could share a press release: “The rumours about me settling down are greatly exaggerated and premature.” Some thought that the frenzy and anarchism characteristic of Maijala’s directing work would level off when he was hired as the director of the largest theatre in the country in terms of volume and number of spectators.

The opening direction at the Helsinki City Theatre shows little sign of such a thing. Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard picks up where it left off in the direction of Three Sisters a few years ago.

Even though she has not necessarily settled down, Maijala is more structured in her Cherry Orchard than in Komi’s “Sisters”. In the latter, speed and the abolition of all conventions were the main issues, and the deeper content of Chekhov’s play tended to be overshadowed by carnivalesque revelry.

Chekhov himself claimed that The Cherry Orchard/Nursery was a comedy, but at the age of 32, Maijala already has enough maturity as a director not to fall into that trap. She does not set out to twist the sad events in Ranevskaya’s life into a farce that can be treated, even though she sometimes makes the people laugh with wild breakaways.

Rumba, samba or whatever else is going on on the airport stage of the City Theatre every now and then, but maybe it’s just the size of the stage that doesn’t create a feeling of restlessness, but the party atmosphere works well in the sense of filling the space. Cherry Orchard could be the name of the daycare centre, and that’s what it looks like at times.

With the abundant help of her trusted set designer Janne Vasama, Maijala also tries out other brisk tricks of using space, such as curtains. The stage design is usually a wild hybrid of Chekhovian rustic stuff and an interior decorated with disco balls, green plant forests and gold paper lining. Sometimes it goes over, mostly it works.

The performance will also be shared with a soundscape. For example, the magnificent string-driven music composed by Lauri Porra captures the attention for a long time when you move from one act to the next and a big change of stage image is made behind the curtain.

Fresh exposures to the gallery of characters

The ultimate focus of most of Chekhov’s plays, the collision of the old and new worlds – and in The Cherry Orchard also the power of money – remains in Maijala’s hands better than Komi’s in this grand and grandiose setting. Clinging to the past, closing one’s eyes to the inevitable change that is coming, becomes more painful the longer one procrastinates. And the Chekhovian people master the art of procrastination better than anyone else.

Maijala still reads her Chekhov differently, not only between the lines, but also the margins.

Now, from the margins of the Chekhov manuscript, people who have been forgotten in many interpretations have emerged. For example, Maijala makes the lackey Firs (played by Seppo Maijala, the director’s father, if this information matters to anyone) more than a coffee pourer and a shoemaker. In this direction, the old man is a fraying link between two eras, the historical knowledge without which the future cannot be seen in the right light. Trofimov (Tommi Eronen – wow!), who is usually a rather indifferent supporting character, is in a somewhat similar position to Firs in this performance. He also has a perspective on both the past and the future, even though he himself is quite lost in the middle and in his longing for a woman.

The central character of the play, the matriarch of a farm and cherry orchard that has fallen into economic decline, Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (Heidi Herala, in this case an experienced actress who takes over the role nicely, and only secondarily the director’s mother) is also at the centre of Maijala’s interpretation, but not in the sense that she runs the action, but that everyone revolves around her as if out of habit.

In the National Theatre’s Cherry Orchard a few years ago, director Mika Myllyaho had raised Ranevskaya’s younger daughter Anja as a point of view. Sonja Kuittinen is also the energetic and passionate Anja, but in Maijala’s direction, the strongest link on the stage is the older of the daughters, Varja, who, played very convincingly by Emilia Sinisalo, shows one or the other the places in the cupboards until the cupboards start to be carried out of the halls of the sold-out space.

Of the characters who are re-illuminated, Lopahin also stands out from the cast gallery. This neighbour of Ranevskaya, who is often described as greedy, is played by Chike Ohanwe, whose Nigerian branch of the family tree presumably also includes people who have experienced slavery. Lopahin of the City Theatre emphasizes his own roots as a descendant of Russian serfs on a couple of occasions, and that connection is not distant: his father still served as a serf on the same farm that Lopahin is now working on to be ready for sale. Chekhov’s play takes place in an era when the winds of great turmoil swept over Russia, the initial force of which was the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

Multi-focal perspective

Even Maijala cannot avoid the perennial problem of canonized Chekhov dramas, that there are simply too many characters in them to create depth for everyone. Maijala tries to give her moments to the accountant Jepidhodov (Eero Saarinen), the debt-ridden landowner neighbour Pishtshik (Jouko Klemettilä), the governess Charlotta Ivanovna (Aino Seppo), but they still remain just comically tuned loose solos.

Kari Mattila, who plays an excellent role, somehow crystallizes Maijala’s bifocal lens perspective throughout the text. Leonid Gayev, Ranevskaya’s brother, played by Mattila, is a comfort-seeking grasshopper character who likes to watch the ants do the right work. Her life in the cycle of the year is always summer and she doesn’t worry about tomorrow. And when you fall into winter, it freezes and hurts.

Light becomes heavy, comedy becomes tragedy.

That’s what happens to many in this play. The fall of the Ranevskaya clan into reality is not soft. And the thump shakes widely.

In Maijala’s final scene, Ranevskaya’s son Grisha, who died at the age of seven, walks onto the stage. Red balls fall from the ceiling of the stage. All the actors have red balloons. Cherries. A silencing image. The one that opens through the other power lens. Has the director settled down after all?