Review: Punaorvot
Red Orphans, which moves silent history on stage to tears, is an important reminder. “This performance is about those who were robbed of everything and who were given nothing,” says director Lauri Maijala.
Author Anneli Kanto has a special ability to delve into historical events in both her books and drama texts, relying deeply emotionally on facts. Like director Lauri Maijala, he also has a clear need to highlight the silenced things in history that cause shame and anxiety. In Helsinki City Theatre’s new play Red Orphans, their artistic vision and social message bring the audience to tears and become aware of one of the wounds of our history.
The fates of the Red Orphans are told on stage in a shocking way, so that we do not forget the atrocities they were subjected to. The powerful message of the performance cuts through our own time, reminding us of the plight of refugee children and other orphans among us who have been hurt by wars and disasters. In his interviews, Kanto has rightly equated ISIS mothers and red widows.
Kanto and Maijala, who have previously collaborated on the KOM Theatre’s play Blood Roses, emphasised in an interview with Yle that the silent and forgotten fate of the Red Orphans was the subject that chose them. That’s a good thing.
“This performance is about those who were deprived of everything and who were given nothing. About those who remained silent and about whom they were silent. About those who were forgotten and then forgotten,” director Lauri Maijala says in the play’s script.
The Civil War of 1918 left behind an estimated 25,000 orphaned or semi-orphaned children. Most of them were on the side of the Reds.
About 1700 red orphans were placed in Ostrobothnia, and some orphans also ended up in Savo.
White orphans and widows were paid pensions. The Reds were given poor relief. It required children to be placed in “good” families that supported white values, out of the sight of “bad working mothers”.
Lauri Maijala, who returns from the Helsinki City Theatre to become the director of the KOM Theatre, once again shakes things up with his theatrical art. However, he doesn’t just cruelty to the facts, but after the sad, distressing first act of the performance, he blasts a carnival on stage in the second half.
There is not much room for pruning in an intact performance, except for the unnecessarily long rambling of the alcoholic boy Aarre at the beginning of the second act before the curtain opens.
The most harrowing role in the performance is played by Ella Mettänen as a deeply depressed mother who has been unreasonably battered by the post-Civil War conditions. In general, the casting is very successful.
At the beginning of the play, the father of the family is killed for hiding weapons.
The half-orphaned children, Aarre (Antti Autio) and Lahja (Wenla Reimaluoto), try to take care of the broken family’s everyday life as best they can, under the wings of the sturdy neighbour Mrs. Elli (Riitta Havukainen).
The family falls apart when the insensitive women of the Homeless Children Association deprive 6-year-old Ilona, Anna Böhm, who plays an excellent little girl, to be placed in an Ostrobothnian home to be whitewashed from the stains of the red family.
The mother’s resistance does not help. It is broken by threatening to end poor relief. Big sister Lahja goes with her sister, but they are placed in different families. The diversity of families increases the interest of the performance, broadening the perspective.
Set designer Janne Vasama has conjured up the compelling stage images. The shabby, ragged chaos of the first act with its broken mannequins and the tilted home depict the inevitable distortion of things and the broken, hurt humanity. Kari Leppälä’s lighting and the sounds of war in the background underline the desolation.
In the second half, a carnivalesque atmosphere bursts onto the stage, and towards the end, the surreal performance, which becomes more and more nightmarish, proceeds in a strongly symbolic manner.
In Lauri Maija’s directions, music always plays an important role. In Red Orphans, his musical dramaturgy, from lullabies to working-class music and music favoured by whites, works well with reference to the viewers’ emotions and musical memories.
The simplistic, painfully beautiful ending of the performance, the lullaby of the Shoemaker’s Lady sung by Alma’s mother, silences the carnival, bringing the mother’s pain and vague hope for a better future and the eyes of innocent children on the skin of the spectators dressed in masks. In the words of Lauri Maijala: “In order for us to grow as a nation, we must know that Finland has also done questionable deeds in history.”