Review: Näytelmä joka menee pieleen
Theatre review: The comedy of collapses – in Arena’s British hit, everything is torn apartRarely – if ever – is there an answer to the basic question of murder mysteries, “Who did it?” as often as now on the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre. Of course, the answer will be given, but it seems very indifferent after all the fuss and senseless chaos.
“Murder at Haversham Manor” is the “crime drama” that an amateur theatre called the “Metropolitan Polytechnic Drama Society” throws itself into performing. Or to be a little more precise: the farce virtuosos of the Helsinki City Theatre play such a bunch of theatre dilettantes in the British hit comedy The Play That Goes Wrong.
The rise of this farce as a hit is quite a Cinderella story. About ten years ago, British theatre students Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields decided to entertain the clientele of a London pub that also offers theatre by writing a farce joke. From that Old Red Lion pub stage, the show’s fame spread on, and in 2013 it premiered in London’s theatre heaven in the West End.
The following year, the show went on a successful tour of England. In 2015, The Play That Goes Wrong won a couple of major British theatre awards, including the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.
This farce has been a world hit since 2017 at the latest, when it premiered on Broadway after already breaking through in many European cities. Also in Finland: in Finland, The Play That Goes Wrong premiered at the Tampere Theatre in the autumn of 2016, and since then it has been adapted into almost ten productions across the country.
Precise tinkering
The Helsinki City Theatre’s version has a printed note in the script “This production is not a replica of the original production”. If it is not a trick – as is the case with many other things in this play – most previous productions here have required compliance with the rights holders’ terms of performance, i.e. copying the original farce. That’s how it tends to be with most successful musicals.
The Helsinki City Theatre is known to have so much skill in making a farce that it has been able to afford (perhaps also when talking about the price of the performance rights) to start making a version on its own.
One essential talent is director Pentti Kotkaniemi, who over the years has directed many comedies of many different genres in Helsinki with his trademark precision.
In accordance with the requirements of the genre, Arena’s The Play That Goes Wrong – accurate. Even though the subject of this farce is an imaginary amateur theatre performing a stale crime mystery, and the resulting endless series of artistic, technical, production and human blunders, the laughter comes from the millimetre-precise timing and the fact that the audience is tuned in to wait for some partial disaster that is about to come again.
A couple of scenes are a bit long. The repetition stops being effective when, for example, the character has to desperately hold objects that are about to fall in place with all their limbs for too long.
Everything is skewed – or WilliamShakespeare, who was also a talent of this genre in the past, wrote the farcical Comedy of Errors as early as the 1590s. A play that goes wrong could well be translated into Finnish in the spirit of Shakespearean as The Comedy of Collapses. This theatre-within-the-theatre hilarity is based not only on the fact that no one knows how to act, but also on the fact that no one has been able to build the sets, lights, sound effects as they should. When various collapses come both in the series and as comprehensive mass collapses, expected but unexpected, it’s the kind of basic fun that only a serious person can not tear up.
Peter Ahlqvist staged this staging about three years ago in the Turku City Theatre’s versions, so he has had a good feel for realizing the fragmentation of the stage image once again.
A play that goes wrong is also the collapse of the characters, mental and physical.
The “director” of the amateur show, Risto (Santeri Kinnunen), who has also grabbed the heroic part of the detective inspector, is ready to bury himself in the ground from time to time as he watches his co-actors’ antics. The female protagonist of the murder story, the future wife of the murdered lord of the manor (Linda Wiklund), gets hit on the head by the door, collapses on the canvas, and remains unconscious for a large part of the play. Anni (Eija Vilpas), a stage manager who is already incompetent in her own work, becomes a quick substitute for the role.
Jonde (Risto Kaskilahti), who plays the murdered Charles Haversham, is also on the verge of a nervous breakdown and has to roll his eyes frequently on stage, which is of course undesirable for a person who plays a dead man.
One just doesn’t seem to lose their self-creation in any way. Masa, who plays the murdered man’s brother and also his rival suitor and aspires to star status, manages to woo the audience in any kind of squeeze. Joel Hirvonen, who has already excelled as a comedian under Kotkaniemi’s direction, will once again be shown his farce talent in Cecil/Masana.
It takes skill to play very very badly actors. It takes skill to make a sharp presentation of a performance where nothing is in order. Now, really, it is. In the cheeky fireworks display on the City Theatre’s Arena stage, everything falls into place. Except for the characters’ lines, entrances and the spots of the lightman Teuvo (Eppu Salminen in an unforgettable outlook!). The lamp will fall. Unexpectedly, but as expected.