Review: Faktiska händelser

In a survey, Lilla Teatern asked people to talk about their lives – the result is an honest, funny, touching and well-acted performance.

A bouquet, as small as a buttonhole flower on a men’s jacket, placed on an infant’s coffin. The image in a mother’s tragic story does not leave me and is an example of when Lilla Teatern’s Actual Events are at their strongest.

The performance is based on an online survey where people have answered questions about their lives, about good decisions they have made and about bad ones. They have also been asked to talk about what they would like to see on the stage of Lilla Teatern – perhaps even a scene from their own lives?

In addition, some of the respondents have been interviewed face-to-face and imagination has also been used where necessary. For example, a woman in the survey says that she was forced to tell her mother about her father’s illegitimate children. The actors set about improvising a marital confrontation with excellent results. This is done through Joachim Wigelius and Linda Zilliacus’ empathetic pet portraits with both scratches and sad dog eyes, but also thanks to Birthe Win gren’s ability to alternate between anger and sadness, tragic and comical. Of course, it is a privilege to see the now Stockholm-based Wingren on a stage in Helsinki – just take her wonderful power lady who, with her exercise poles in full swing and an eager use of the v-word, gives the noisy young people on the bus answers to speech.

Dates and surgeries

Actual events are also a performance that feels honest. “That’s exactly what life is like” I often think – unpleasant surgical procedures, sad divorces, failed dates and long-awaited children that change the course of your entire life. Both simple and infinitely complicated. Kira-Emmi Pohto-kari’s character’s embarrassing Tinder date that ends in drunkenness is believable, as is Alexander Wendelin’s nasty ecstasy trip.

But it also feels like the show is honest with the fact that the perspective is white, middle-class and mostly quite middle-aged. The sincerity that it is a question of one of many possible perspectives on life means that the performance does not feel closed either. Director Joakim Groth smoothly builds up scenes with a sense of rhythm, spot-on timing and a twinkle in the eye.

Elisa Makarevitch and Groth have compiled a text that is often strong with both funny and sad elements. However, I’m not convinced that it was the right strategy to start with scenes that have a bit of a hard time lifting dramaturgically and end by letting two of the performance’s strongest texts come after each other. There is a certain imbalance, but the two-hour-long performance still manages to be entertaining and interesting almost all the time.

With the last two monologues about the cruelest sides of life, Linda Zilliacus and Birthe Wingren show how versatile and incredibly strong actors they are. It is well played overall and many of the types we get to know feel right on point. Joachim Wigelius’ self-righteous doctor, Linda Zilliacus’ overly positive woman and Niklas Häggblom’s husband who just happened to see a beautiful “bean” on the street, married her and has recently celebrated his long and happy marriage at Långvik’s spa, are all sensitively chiseled, funny, but above all very familiar.