Review: Prinsessa Ruusunen – Paluu tulevaisuuteen

Sleeping Beauty – Back to the Future @ ShedHelsinki, Studio Pasila

The King (Viljami Rosvall) and Queen (Melis Yasat/Elina Kervinen) have a baby girl, who is happily celebrated by the whole kingdom. The godparents give the child all kinds of gifts, such as music, leadership and plumbing skills, but then the evil elf Myrtle (Pauliina Kiuru) shows up and gives the girl death. At the age of sixteen, Sleeping Beauty (Adela Ogunbor/Josefiina Vanamo) comes to poke her finger and dies, but luckily the girl’s other godparents cancel the curse and change it so that Sleeping Beauty just falls asleep for a hundred years. Good Conscience (Janne Saarinen) and Bad Conscience (Alvari Stenbäck), accompanied by the teenage Sleeping Beauty, travels to her parents’ youth, to 1977.

Now there is a lot going on, humor, speed, skill and good vibes all over the stage! At the premiere, technical problems delayed the start of the show for about half an hour, but it did not affect the performance in any way, as all the performers pulled off their own roles smoothly. This was really nice to watch, a fun and charming show and nice that we didn’t go with a traditional story, but brought the year 1977 and the parents’ teenage adventures into the world of Sleeping Beauty.

The simplistic projections in the background fit the mood of the performance. Simple images of rooms, corridors and other landscapes might be too stripped down, but here they work well and don’t distract from the performers, but support the story well. The group is wearing fine and colorful costumes, but I especially remember Myrtle’s fine outfit and especially the black crown thing, the shiny wefts of Good and Bad conscience and the colorful clothes of the teachers.

Adela Ogundor, who plays Sleeping Beauty, is charming as a teenage girl who rebels against her parents, and she also sings very beautifully. The group of teachers is quite colourful and full of different personalities, including Mrs Torremolinos (Linda Hasan), a language teacher who hates children, and Mr Plato (Peter Pihlström), a hard-thinking philosophy teacher. By the way, the performance had all the same things that we went through in philosophy class on the day of the premiere at school! Pauliina Kiuru’s Myrtle and especially her son Byrtle (Paavo Leppäkoski) were also great characters. However, my favorite type was Viljami Rosvall’s King, especially the hippie atmosphere of the 70s.

There was enough music on stage and I especially liked the pecking of two ideas in the song Hipit ja punkkarit, the song Our Gang performed by today’s schoolchildren, the song Aikamatka (Time Travel), which transports the group from the present day to the 70s, and the song Muiden haavees in the final scene. There are a lot of great choreographies in the crowd scenes, but especially the dance moves of Good and Bad Conscience steal the attention many times.

This goes until 19.12., you should go and enjoy the great thing for young people! The good feeling stays on and you can’t look at this without smiling. Now I’m sorry that I didn’t go to see ShedHelsinki’s Peter Pan performance last year, but I’m sure I’ll have to go and see the next production. Thank you for this!