Review: Tähtisadetta

There are also deeper levels in the suitably quirky comedy Tähtiradetta 

Written by award-winning American actor and stand-up comedian Steve Martin, Meteor Shower is a pleasantly weird sitcom with some rough twists and turns.

The performance has been directed to the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre by Mika Eirtovaara, who has also done stand-up comedy. Starburst is suitable for Eirtovaara’s style, as it deals with seemingly mundane issues with a strong surreal touch.

The text of Martin’s comedy starts off calmly, but soon starts to take more turns. Like a traditional comedy arc, the characters are first introduced and little by little, stranger and stranger traits begin to emerge from the characters.

Corky (Katja Küttner) and Norm (Mikko Penttilä) are an ordinary couple. Or are they? They have invited a couple of acquaintances who are very different from themselves to their comfortable little home. As if from another planet, the seductress Laura (Vappu Nalbantoglu) and the arrogant-looking Gerald (Peter Ahlqvist) fly to spend the evening and admire the predicted, spectacular meteor shower.

Laura and Gerald decide to provoke the host couple’s marriage to a total collapse as soon as they arrive. The references in the book to Edward Albee’s family hell classic Who’s Afraid of Virgia Wolf? become obvious. From the depths of the minds and subconscious of all the characters, jammed stuff soon begins to bubble up. Often it is quite sexually tinged.

When the guests arrive, things soon start to happen, and gradually strange events and the oddities revealed by the characters jump into the spotlight. In a modern style, the play flies through time, offering alternative possibilities for realising the events of the evening. The turnaround at the end of the second half is ticklingly surprising.

Starry has crooked, sometimes even raunchy humour and suitably absurd features in the events. I was struck by the play’s suitably twisted twist. The performance refers to the surprising power of the subconscious, and the main couples can see each other as subconscious reflections. Martin’s text also contains quite pertinent and ironic, more social comments. Actual one-liners that the characters drop here and there, topics such as the funding of medical research, the importance of marriage or the endless therapy of a relationship.

Eirtovaara’s direction is rhythmically fast and snappy, well suited to the genre. The performance is really dense, with intermissions of one hour and thirty-five minutes, and that’s a good thing, this way it retains its intensity and the intermission of the play, which proceeds in a frantic rhythm, is also justified.

Katja Küttner, with both physical and intelligent acting, succeeds in turning Corky into a nuanced character. Mikko Penttilä’s Norm also rises from its initial normality to a surprisingly rough one. Penttilä’s comedy skills are well showcased, especially in the second half. Nalbantoglu’s Laura and Ahlqvist’s Gerald remain thinner as characters, which is of course how the characters were originally written.

Helsinki City Theatre’s Starburst is an interestingly layered comedy. Twisted humour is used to deal with marriage, the status of women and men, as well as other social themes. The events and characters in the play make you laugh, but you can also find yourself and even your own relationship in them.