Review: Riistapolku

The Game Trail confuses and captivates The Game Trail, directed by Lauri Maijala, is a confusing play, partly because the text is based on real events. The performance is a tragic story built on a stripped-down stage, which makes you ask, what exactly happens to these people? In principle, they are normal, if such an attribute can be used at all, but some crack makes them act in a strange way.

The play by German Franz Xavier Kroertz (b. 1946) depicts a series of events that shook the lives of a working-class family in the 1970s. There is a father, a mother and a 13-year-old daughter Hanni. On the surface, everything seems to be going well. The father dreams of a slightly better-paid job as a truck driver, but the mother thinks that the current situation is quite sufficient. The disagreements are mainly limited to the meal served at the dinner table, so it is not dangerous. The only child is looked after a little too much, but that’s understandable. Television brings the rest of the world inside the walls of the home.

Then Hanni (Ella Mettänen) falls in love with 19-year-old Franz (Paavo Kinnunen), whom she bumps into on her way to school. The boy is a bit inefficient, in odd jobs, and even shy. Hanni acts as a catalyst for a budding relationship, and when the meetings are forbidden after the revelations, Hanni makes suggestions for secret encounters.

The consequences are horrifying. You can think about the interpretation of the events in any way you want, and you can’t find a definite answer after all. The viewer’s general moral perception points accusingly at Franz, who is simply not allowed to touch an underage girl. However, it is too simple a solution. On stage, too, the culprit is sought in everyone, even the unborn child. The era is also exorcised for its leniency and Hitler’s systematic time is remembered wistfully.

Throughout, the excellent acting drops Kroetz’s skillfully sparse dialogue with chilling precision. And because the stage is so empty, every word falls weighty. Each character becomes guilty, each according to their actions and habits.

Ursula Salo’s mother is a martyr, whose most painful memory is when her father destroyed the nylon socks she had just bought in her youth. Risto Kaskilahti’s father is easy-going and flexible until something bad happens. Hanni Mettänen behaves touchingly childishly, but her actions are skillfully manipulative. Is it caused by falling in love or is it a bigger psychological injury? Franz Kinnunen moves lazily and lives like a simple child of nature, he does not have a very strong will of his own, and therefore it is easy to lure him anywhere.

The whole is captivating and every element on stage strives to be important and significant. After the intermission-free performance, you feel speechless, can this happen to people, really? And all for the sake of falling in love?