Review: Täydellinen lauantai
A Perfect Saturday – Helsinki City Theatre A Perfect Saturday is a comedy written by Florian Zeller, where you just want to take a little moment for yourself, but those damn other people come to disturb you.
Helsinki City Theatre The Arena stage will feature a farce directed by Jaakko Saariluoma, previously performed in Swedish at Lilla teatern. Comedy is a difficult genre and Perfect Saturday manages it in a safe way.
In the play, we are In Markus’s living room, where he tries to listen to a record he just found at a flea market. Like a real farce, however, the doors start to open and the phones ring. Relationships also happen to turn upside down during that time of relaxation.
Markus’ wife, Helena, has something to say. Son Sebastian (or Fucking Rat, as he likes to be called now) is coming to visit, as is his old friend Pauli. Markus wouldn’t necessarily want to visit Elsa when Helena is there, but it’s good to have time to take care of this when a Polish repairman causes water damage so that the downstairs neighbor Pavel also arrives.
The group keeps many of the play’s threads together, and especially the Polish repairman Leo, played by Jouko Klementtilä, causes several laughs from the audience. Vappu Nalbantoglu plays the character of Elsa in a wonderfully lively way, and Arttu Kapulainen’s Sebastian is just infuriatingly angstic enough. The actors work precisely, and timing plays an important role in this play.
In the end, the driving force of the performance is Pekka Strang’s charisma. With his voice, face and movements, he is able to take over the audience in seconds. In the role of the wife, Vuokko Hovatta goes through inner turmoil, leaving room for Strang’s grandiose mannerisms. The biggest amusement in the play is the reactions that other people cause in the character of Strang. Those stupid other people who upset the peace when a man just wants to listen to the album by himself.
Antti Mattila’s set design, in its Scandinavian elegance, is a great setting for the events of the story. The apartment hints at the peace and tranquility that Markus doesn’t seem to be achieving.
The pursuit of one’s own moment says something about our time, and failure to do so says something about our balancing relationship with our social environment. In this play, you can reflect on the limits of your own time and community, but on the other hand, you can just go and enjoy pure farce. Everything is colourful and loud and in the end so light that maybe in this performance you can just lean back and take a moment for yourself.
More information about the performance can be found on the Helsinki City Theatre website. If only farce strikes as a genre, then here is a play for you.