Review: Suomen hauskin mies

Humour about death

At first, it makes me laugh. Then you get embarrassed.

After all, people are starving and fighting for life here. It’s not okay to laugh.

But now you can, when death is so close to life.

The year is 1918. The cast is brought to a prison camp and sentenced to death. However, the group can avoid its fate if it manages to entertain future dignitaries.

The command “Laugh or you will be shot” inspires some immediately, some more slowly. The viewer wonders that anyone gets excited.

“As any end approaches, humour dies last,” says director Heikki Kujanpää.

According to him, theatre has always been an “antidote to anxiety”. Many workers’ theatres continued to operate during the war.

The play is enjoyable to watch, especially during the first half. It turns out that a prisoner is not just a prisoner, and a German soldier is not just a soldier either. There are strengths, weaknesses and an eye for the game.

The highlights include Martti Suosalo, who plays the main character Toivo Parikka, Risto Kaskilahti’s actor Elo, Heikki Ranta, who plays Jaeger Lieutenant Alfred Nyborg, and Rauno Ahonen’s captain Hjalmar Kalm.

In the prison camp, people act, mess around, starve and even try to die – with humour until the end.

“I didn’t know that sawdust could be used to make bread. This must be a piece of shit on table legs!”

The swarming of prisoners around their hanged comrade is explained to the guards in the words of Sulo Wuolijoki: “We have to queue because there is only one rope.”

About the insecure executioner’s “Eyes closed at the command. The advice “It’s going well!” reminds me of a swimming school and not of the fact that there are still those alive who have seen that time.