Review: Sinun, Margot

Meri Valkama’s novel gets the interpretation it deserves – review Helsinki City Theatre’s Sinun, Margot

Margot Valkama’s debut novel Sinun, Margot (2021) has been a bestseller and critic in Finland, and it has also been published as a translation in several European countries. The work is being made into a TV series, and it was only a matter of time before it would be made into a theatrical adaptation. The first to get to the point was the Helsinki City Theatre, where Riikka Oksanen has directed a story about the fragility of memory and the power of silence for the Main Stage.

Yours, Margot follows two levels of time. In 1983, Markus Siltanen moves with his family to East Berlin to work as a foreign correspondent. The daughter of the family, Vilja, grows up in the midst of East German ideals. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 leads to the family’s return to Finland and the dissolution of the parents’ marriage. Vilja’s memories of her childhood begin to fade.

In 2011, after her father’s death, Vilja finds a bundle of letters from a woman named Margot. He returns to Berlin to find out who his father really was and what his own past is. It turns out that the father has had an affair with an East German woman. Yours, Margot deals strongly with family relationships, changes in ideologies and European history, especially the time of the GDR and subsequent events.

And with what ease the director carries the story! Oksanen makes insightful use of the possibilities of theatre as an interpreter of personal and collective memory. In the simultaneous scenes, the past and the present intersect in a cutting way. The passion between individuals is given a stylish and touching choreographic realization. The loyal official of the system transforms into a guard soldier in the blink of an eye through dance movements. Oksanen’s direction is full of well-thought-out and strongly aestheticized stage images like the ones mentioned above.

The successful outcome is supported by Tuomas Timonen’s dramatization. Having read the novel, it can be said that this interpretation captures the spirit and key events of Valkama’s novel and still gets a new life and new levels as a stage adaptation with its own voice.

From the GDR, we mainly remember the ubiquitous state apparatus, whose individual tentacles reached the lives of almost every East German through the Stasi. Yours, Margot touchingly proves that there was also good in the system. The state offered everyone work and housing, health care was free and life was predictable in every way. This is often not remembered today, because historiography is known to have been written by the victors. Of course, the system had its flaws, and this is also the story that is openly told.

At the heart of everything, however, are individual human destinies. The perspective is always strongly based on the experiences of the individual. The scenographic solutions with video projections or set solutions are only indicative and that makes the experience particularly impressive. This is not a one-to-one epochal drama, especially when it comes to the protagonist’s childhood memories, which are inevitably somewhat flimsy.

Set designer Antti Mattila makes brilliant use of HKT’s stage the size of a football field. Dark metal frames create an image of a rainy, faceless city at night, silently witnessing individual human destinies. The association with the prefabricated house architecture of the GDR is obvious. It is especially evident when you change scale and are in a chamber drama. The bare walls are adorned only with a lone poster against nuclear armament.

The whole is supported by a world of light and video designed by Toni Haaranen, in which the past appears as single, flash-like memories. This is definitely not a documentary theatre. Special mention can also be made of Eradj Nazimov’s successful sound design. In it, memories and the present blend into a mosaic of authentic sounds and pieces of music, in which the present and the past alternate in an interesting way.

The acting is consistently strong across the board. In the role of the point of view person, Satu Tuuli Karhu instantly exchanges the confusion of an adult woman for the innocence of a two-year-old. Martin Bahnen In his idealism, Markus successfully captures the habitus of a naïve journalist. In the face of conflicting choices, Bahne brings complexity to the role. Sara Soulié However, Markus’s Luise-lover is the most interesting character in the performance. Soulié’s ethereal essence is as if made for this role. Luise’s passion and desire are powerful and at the same time there is something touchingly vulnerable about it.

Special thanks are due to the well-edited programme, which is becoming a rarity in Finnish theatres. In it, writer-journalist Valkama opens up the state story of the GDR in an interesting way. By the way, Finland was the Western country with the closest relations with East Germany. Of course, it was partly based on our Eastern policy. Over the years, close scientific and cultural exchanges grew alongside political relations. Probably just this group of your, Margot -interesting very much. Not forgetting its universal message of longing.

The review can be found here.