Review: Vain parasta minulle
Theatre review: Stories of humanity – Helsinki City Theatre’s three miniature plays grow into a functional whole
Helsinki City Theatre’s Only Best for Me is an interesting set of three plays. The mini-dramas written by Sofi Oksanen, Elina Snickeriand Maija Vilkkumaa offer diverse atmospheres of our world now and in the near future.
The two hours included a description of the Ukrainian surrogacy business, a surprising connection in a swimming pool, and a fantasy of the future in Helsinki. Director Aino Kivi , together with dramaturg Henna Piirto , has built a structurally functional whole from these three separate plays.
Two-Layer Realities
The three-stage performance begins with Sofi Oksanen’s Love You Already. The same play text has also inspired Oksanen’s novel Koirapuisto.
I Love You Already tells about the Ukrainian fertility business and the story is told through two women, Marja from Finland and Daria from Ukraine. Daria, who lives in poverty, hopes that selling her eggs will be a solution to her money problems and guarantee a better future for her and her child. On the other side of Europe, Marja, who suffers from infertility in Helsinki, dreams of having a child of her own, blissfully unaware of the merciless reality in which Daria has to make her choices.
In the play I Love You Already , two different realities collide, concretely on two different floors. Aino Kivi leads the stories smoothly and the actors Aurora Manninen and Vappu Nalbantoglu do their work convincingly. I Love You Already is also the strongest of all three miniature plays in terms of emotional expression. Set designer Mika Haaranen’s projections of the actors’ faces bring even the smallest facial expressions and emotions closer.
Actress and choreographer Kaisa Torkkel will be seen throughout the performance of Only Best for Me in small supporting roles. The character of Torkkeli’s cleaner, in particular, is woven into an essential part of the transitions from one play and atmosphere to another.
In the mood of lamentations
As if by stealth, the stage turns around and the spectators are smoothly taken elsewhere, to the changing room of the swimming pool.
Elina Snicker’s play Crying for a Stranger depicts an encounter between two people in the middle of storage cupboards. Riitta Havukainen throws herself into the role of a strange woman who asks for help, and the unsuspecting Aurora Manninen is the target of her various requests.
The play is based on the Karelian lament tradition and it has been brought into the actors’ expression. Crying for a stranger mixes absurd elements with everyday ones and also sprinkles subtle, condensing horror. The play is over quickly and its place in the Only Best for Me ensemble has been chosen effectively.
Daughters of the Baltic Sea
Returning from the intermission, the stage has been transformed into the Helsinki of the future, where climate change has done its job and taken over part of the city centre with water. Maija Vilkkumaa’s Sea Weather is looking for comedy in people struggling in the whirlwind of upheaval. Merja Larivaara and Nalbantoglu get to tear up as friends who run their own rowing boat company, trying their best to benefit from the new reality.
Plot-wise, Merisää reaches in a little too many directions, even though the future of the play is interesting in itself. Sea Weather differs more strongly from the previous two plays, especially with the visuals, futuristic steampunk. The play also features a beautiful song with a characteristic sound of Vilkkumaa.
Only the best for me performance presents the biggest and smallest human questions in life. In the performance as a whole, the plays are clearly separate and independent from each other, while still finding thematic connections with each other. There is commendably enough room for the viewer’s free interpretation.