Review: Niin kuin taivaassa

Tear ducts opened

For many reasons, emotions were running high at the premiere of the Helsinki City Theatre’s new musical As It Is in Heaven . The viewer was literally in heaven – in the theatre again and in many ways under the spell of a touching performance.

It was somehow heartbreaking to see how, due to the corona restrictions, only a couple of hundred people are allowed to sit in the auditorium of 900 people, and how conscientiously the theater’s ushers gave safety instructions from the moment we stepped through the front doors. I don’t think there is a safer place than the theater at the moment!!

The music of the Swedish composer Fredrik Kempe resonates directly to the heart, as does the story written by Kay and Carin Pollak . It tells the story of a world-famous conductor’s return to his small home village somewhere in Sweden, the physical and mental bullying he experienced there as a child, and the kind of life a man with a life-threatening heart disease manages to breathe into the villagers’ church choir.

The story of the musical is not some kind of light cotton candy. The story touches on bullying, acceptance of disability and difference, domestic violence, the domination of the church and, finally, dreams that can come true if a person believes in themselves. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else believes in you either…

All of them are shockingly strong themes, but there is also room for a lot of humor and laughter in the story. Swedish director Jakob Höglund captures all these themes in his direction.

Tuukka Leppänen is overdriven in the lead role. He heartbreakingly demonstrates his own fragility, insecurity and pain after the successful years of his career. And sings like in heaven! Oona Airola makes her debut as a musical star and is natural in her life as a woman who is disappointed in men. Sinikka Sokka once again lights up the stage in her own solo songs, as does Emilia Nyman as a wife living under her violent husband’s fist. Puntti Valtonen is a captivatingly agile and mouth-watering man in the village.

And oh my goodness, what kind of violinist we see on stage – the young Miska Lundberg plays himself right under the skin and the same can be said about the sound of the orchestra led by Eeva Konnu .

The City Theatre’s successful musical The Little Mermaid feasted on its uniquely magnificent sets, As in Heaven is visually very minimalistic. Set designer Sven Haraldsson makes efficient use of empty white space, and the black poles moved by actors and dancers are sometimes like a spruce forest, sometimes like the organ pipes of a church.