Review: Kultainen vasikka

Only money matters. Money buys love, the poor don’t even have love because they lack money. Maria Jotuni wrote The Golden Calf a hundred years ago. And here it is again, good work stands the test of time and is still relevant in this FB/Insta/digital age.

The Helsinki City Theatre describes the play as follows: “The play is about people who start speculating in the midst of unstable conditions and deprivation, who are blinded by the dream of getting rich quickly and the security it brings. Everything is merchandise, including love.

Of the two daughters of the family of photographer Ahlroos, who lives in poverty, Lahja is still unmarried, and Eedit is married to the honest businessman Jaakko, but like her mother, she begins to dream of riches and a wider life. Who wins, money or love?

Director Heidi Räsänen characterizes the play in Teatteriin magazine as follows: “A woman does what has traditionally been done by men: she visits, she becomes wealthy. And this is done without becoming a dude at all, and it is written through very good, sarcastic and cunning humour.”

Eedit’s (Vappu Nalbantoglu) love interest changes depending on who is willing to pay the best price for love. Vappu is very believable, her gestures are small and effective. The restrained madness of the bourgeoisie in a very digestible package.

The little sister (Helmi-Leena Nummela) is an insane fool with youthful enthusiasm, who still has a strict goal, she has to get a husband and that’s it. He takes over the stage very intensely so that for a moment he forgets that he has also seen the actor in other roles – this role seems so much to him.

Heidi Herala as a mother who makes a slot machine in her lust for money and Jari Pehkonen , a great favorite of Bad Mother, as a father, do a charismatic job in a comedy that feels like a modern-day reality series despite its hundred years of age.

To whom can this play be recommended? I recommend this play to everyone who cares about how I look in my FB updates and to everyone who has to put up the façade so damn much. I also recommend this play to all parents who get to listen to a teenager whining all day long about how they just have to get that 200 euro jacket because everyone else has one too. Maria Jotuni puts flour in our mouths from beyond the grave for us children of the digital age, and that’s a skill, that’s it.