Review: Pienet ketut

Siblings touched by evil

Lillian Hellman’s dramas are a rare treat in Finland.

Over the past two and a half years, we have become accustomed to the fact that almost everything we hear from the United States arouses fear or disgust. If we think optimistically, this degradation of the democratic traditions of a great power will one day produce bitter but high-quality literature, both prose and drama.
After all, it has happened before. On both sides of World War II, American literature lived through the days of its strength.
On the side of drama as we crawl out of the swamp of the post-1929 depression onto the stage
There were already a lot of new quality plays from fresh names, with Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets and William Saroyan at the forefront.

The decade and a half after the Great War accelerated the avalanche. From American authors
We got more and more dramatic texts that went under the skin. Williams was still one of the top names (The Chariot of Seduction, The Cat on a Hot Roof), but he was joined by, among others,
Arthur Miller (The Death of a Merchant, A View from the Bridge), Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and William Ingen (Come Back, Little Sheba).

Of the female dramatists, one name stood out most prominently in this dude-driven onslaught, Lillian Hellman (1905–1984). He broke on Broadway as early as 1934 with his play The Children’s Hour, and an even bigger hit came from the family drama The Little Foxes (1939). Later successes included The Guard on the Rhine (1941), which was linked to Nazi Germany, and Broken Games (1960), which drew its theme from the depression of the 1930s.

Hellman, who is politically left-leaning, has been portrayed surprisingly little in Finland over the decades. Before this fresh move in Helsinki
according to the Ilona database, the latest entry in a professional theatre performance can be found 26 years ago at the Rauma City Theatre, Pieni ketut even then.

But it is not for nothing that Kari Heiskanen has tackled Hellman’s bitterly bubbly family drama. Even though The Little Foxes, written 80 years ago, is set in a small town in the Deep South in the 20th century, there is something so timeless about the Hubbard siblings’ ruthless game that the play can be performed to the end of the world. It is unlikely that a person is refined so much that this text would not always and forever be a point of contact.

In the story, the Hubbard brothers, Oscar and Ben, have the opportunity to partner with a powerful man from Chicago, but they also need the input of their sister Regina to raise the initial capital. Southern belle Regina, who thirsts for a more glamorous life, has the money behind her sickly husband Horace. When Horace doesn’t give up his possessions, the siblings hatch a cruel plot to get their hands on the money. Regina and Horace’s daughter Alexandra and Oscar Hubbard’s son Leo would also have a role reserved for the intrigue.

KARI HEISKANEN has not had to touch Hellman’s text with dramaturgical or directing updates. The play’s epoch may not be quite from the beginning of the last millennium, but that is a side issue: the boundless greed of the human race is so eternal that it does not matter so much what kind of set and costumes it is performed in. Not that Elina Kolehmainen’s scenography isn’t stylish, albeit a bit clinical.

The talkative drama escalates from the initial appeasement into a frenzied internal showdown within the family, in which no means are shy away. From the sweet small talk in the opening scene to the hate speech in the final stage, it is light years away at the level of thought, but in the story, everything happens in a few days and on stage in about an hour and a half. But plausibly,
without rushing. It is precisely the ruthless compactness that is the greatest asset of Heiskanen’s direction.

And an ensemble of actors.

I don’t know if the director has deliberately cast the main roles of the play in different contexts, mainly with actors known for their comedic work, but at least they have an excellent opportunity to show the breadth of their scale in this cannon. And that’s what they do. Sari Siikander is fire and brimstone as Regina, who is thirsty for mammon, while Risto Kaskilahti plays an exceptionally moving role as Horace, who is trampled to the ground by his wife and is ready to fight back. Seppo Halttunen and Rauno Ahonen make sharp outpigeons as Hubbard’s slightly stupid but gambler-like boisterous brothers.

In 1946, Lillian Hellman wrote another part in the forest, which
tells the story of the Hubbard siblings at the end of the 1800s. If only there were a “Foxes”
interesting to see it on stage as well. The weasel has not been in Finland before
Performed in professional theatres