Review: Suomen hauskin mies

Laughter conquers anger

Can it be said more clearly than director Heikki Kujanpää says: “Satire is the measure of society. Even in distressing circumstances, any community can survive when it knows how to deal with its issues through humour. As any end approaches, humor dies last.”

Kujanpää and Mikko Reitala show that this is possible in their fine, gnarled and tragic new play The Funniest Man in Finland, which will now be premiered on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre.

It is based on facts. In the summer of 1918, the Iso-Mjölö prison camp off the coast of Helsinki was full of starving Red prisoners suffering from many diseases. Arbitrary executions were an everyday occurrence, and the white leaders of the camp who fought on the side of the Whites knew no mercy. In the early stages, there were also German guards in the camp, who treated the prisoners without the emotional turmoil that divided the nation in two.

The director of the workers’ theatre, who is accused of murdering a Helsinki vicar, is brought to the camp. Toivo Parikka is a fictional character, but his role model is real. He is a mixture of actor Jalmari Parika (who, among other things, starred with Tapio Rautavaara in the film Wild North in 1955 and was a respected interpreter of Moliere) and actor Aarne Orjatsalo, the grandfather of actor Jotaarkka Pennanen.

The play’s Toivo Parikka and his fellow actors can avoid the death penalty if they prepare an amusement play in a couple of weeks for the guests arriving on the island, Regent P.E. Svinhufvud and German Major General von der Goltz.

The proposal is absurd, but it will be implemented. Martti Suosalo, who plays the lead role, puts everything on the line, his acting skills, his athleticism and his musicality. The couplet Pants Stain, composed and written by him, is like the best Repe Helismaa and, of course, much more blasphemous and tearfully political considering the situation. When a brass band is added to the story, the atmosphere in the stands is ecstatic.

“Are you laughing? Laugh, because the dead don’t laugh,” Parikka-Suosalo commands the stands. Yes, it makes you laugh, but it also moves. Suosalo has a personal approach to the subject, as his grandfather knew the actor Jalmari Parikka.

The cast of the play is a bull’s-eye. Rauno Ahonenas the almost sadistic leader of the camp, Vappu Nalbantogluas the initially strictly ideological wife of the camp director… Heikki Ranta as a jaeger lieutenant, Petrus Kähkönen as a turner, Pekka Huotari and Risto Kaskilahti as actors, Jari Pehkonen as an evening actor, Heikki Sankari as a guard…

The set design was designed by Pekka Korpiniity, and it works better than any of the sets on a small stage in a long time.

Hatred is overcome with laughter, including hatred. To quote Heikki Kujanpää freely: “Theatre is the strongest antidote to anxiety. Theatre activities began immediately after the Civil War and partly while it was still ongoing. Plays were even made in prison camps…”