Review: Veljeni Leijonamieli

Helsinki City Theatre’s My Brother Lionheart is like a beautiful and touching play

I was perhaps nine when I experienced one of the most thrilling reading experiences of my life: Astrid Lindgren’s My Brother Lionheart had been selected for me from the library by chance. Through that coincidence, I got to know Joonatan, Korppu and Nangijala, a story of life and death, sincere brotherhood and honest courage. Between the covers, something so thrilling was captured that I still remember the experience of reading it for the first time. After that day, I carried the book home from the library quite a few more times.

I was sincerely excited when I heard that the Helsinki City Theatre was making a play version of the story. My Brother Lion’s Heart premiered on the big stage of the theatre on 17.10.2024 and I was lucky enough to see it just a couple of weeks later.

A Story of Brotherhood and Courage

“Now we are going to tell the story of the brothers, Kaarle and Jonathan the Lion, and how they became Lionhearts. This story is like a fairy tale, and a bit of a ghost story, but it’s all true.”

My Brother Lionheart is Astrid Lindgren’s fantasy fairy tale classic about brothers facing death. The sensitive little brother, Korppu, who admires his older brother, has been ill all his life and his death has been expected. On the other hand, the busy and helpful older brother Joonatan dies unexpectedly while rescuing his little brother from a fire.

Together, the brothers end up beyond death, in the beautiful land of Nangijala, where evil has taken over. Tengil and his troops oppress the people of Nangijala with the dragon Katla as their weapon. Together, the brothers fight for good, against evil, and at the same time, the fearful Corpus also grows into a brave Lionheart.

In the play, Alexander Wendelin and Mikko Kauppila, who play the brothers, captivate in their roles. While Kauppila captures Joonatan’s positive courage in life, Wendelin is a believable young and insecure Korppu, whose development into Nangijala’s hero is a pleasure to watch. Wendelin and Kauppila conjured up a familiar brother duo on stage, the heroes of my childhood, who are strikingly similar in appearance, as I always imagined them to be. And how beautiful the thread of brotherhood is built by them!

The Magic of Puppet Theatre and a Sense of Movement

My Brother Lionheart is not a story of the most tame end, but the scariest scenes have been distanced on stage by means of puppet theatre. The puppets of different sizes and types conjured up by Heini Maaranen are not only ingeniously inventive, but also skilfully directed by the performers.

Tengil’s oppressive forces have taken the form of faceless foam men who have lost their color. Korppu and Joonatan, on the other hand, transform into sympathetic dummies in tight spots. For example, when Korpu dives into a dark, cramped cave, the frightening journey is handled by a puppet, whose movement language manages to remain strikingly similar to Wendelin’s interpretation. It is captivating to watch how the actors’ interplay creates the movement language of the puppet characters and the feeling of travelling in a variety of terrains, down to the smallest detail.

The magnificent animal figures are also gorgeous, such as Korpu’s and Joonatan’s horses Rimma and Fjalar, wolves running around with their crutches, or origami doves soaring for freedom. Their execution is fresh and inventive, as if taken from children’s games, and creates opportunities for spectacular choreographies and humour born from movement language. With crutches

The revolving stage with its geometric shapes and choreographic insights supports the illusion of travel, of which there is a lot in the story. Valleys and mountains are drawn in front of you, where you can race, gallop and climb. Also on the set is the play’s astonishing musician, Senni Valtonen, whose repertoire of instruments seems endless: during the performance, Valtonen plays, among other things, the concert kantele, piano, key violin, folk flutes, clarinet, accordion, bagpipes and a 16-string deck.

More than just fairy tales and nostalgia

I don’t remember that My Brother Lionheart felt like a frightening reading experience as a child. It was thrilling and fascinatingly wild, but not scary. However, as I sat in the theater hall, I found myself surprised by how much cruelty and violence was included in the story. Even though the use of dolls softened the wildest parts of the story, the viewing experience would have been too scary for my own, sensitive children (4 and 6 years old).

The performance is recommended for children over 9 years of age. Still, there seemed to be a lot of younger people in the audience. When executions were being carried out on stage, I glanced hesitantly at the little spectators sitting around me. However, the iron-nerved juniors weren’t bothered by the events at all, but just seemed to enjoy the suck of the fairy tale – maybe they had read their Lindgrens?

If I had imagined sitting on a theatre bench to travel on a skilful nostalgia journey to childhood, after the performance I noticed that it had shaken me anyway. The past two and a half hours had been something so cruel, touching and beautiful at the same time! Even though My Brother the Lionheart is “like a fairy tale, and a bit of a ghost story”, the final canopy of the introductory words is also true: There is something very familiar and topical in the story, written more than 50 years ago, also reflected in our time.

“However, everything is true.”

Review in the Äijä-mom blog.