Review: Suomen hauskin mies

Finland’s Funniest Man takes the audience to horror and joy

The funniest man in Finland on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre is Martti Suosalo’s celebration. At the same time, the viewer is made to think about the horrors, torture and executions of the first months of Finland’s independence, but there is also revelry and theatre.

The year is 1918 and the Finnish Civil War: the Civil Guards and the Red Guards were fighting in different localities. The situation was not made any easier by unemployment, miserable working conditions and hunger.

The play The Funniest Man in Finland, written by Mikko Reitala and Heikki Kujanpää, tells the story of Toivo Parikka (Martti Suosalo), an actor from the Finnish Workers’ Theatre, and his colleagues, all of whom end up in a prison camp on the island of Iso-Mjölö off the coast of Helsinki. The conditions are gloomy. The death penalty without a court hearing is known. The commandant of the prison camp, Captain Hjalmar Kalm (Rauno Ahonen), receives information that Regent P.E. Svindufvud (Risto Kaskilahti) is coming for an inspection visit. He orders the prisoners to act with the aim of making the audience laugh. Parikka has made a “deal” with the captain: if the guests laugh, the actors will get a fair trial.

The play gives a good picture of how arbitrary everything has been in the early stages of our independence. Human dignity has been zero. And that was only 100 years ago.

The message of the play is also that even in the midst of gloom, joy and fun are needed in order to endure all the horrors and horrors.

In an instant, the mood changes from boisterous joy to anxiety, skillfully and precisely. The viewers have to be careful all the time.

The text and message of the play are excellent. Heikki Kujanpää’s direction is fluent and Pekka Korpiniity’s set design works well on a small stage where every inch has been used. There is no excessive referential nature in the set design, and the viewer does not have to put their energy into imagining the different spaces.

Martti Suosalo gets to shine, using his extensive professional skills from acting to singing. The role must be heavy, because Suosalo is on stage almost all the time, running, jumping, singing, etc. Great work.

Rauno Ahonen’s captain is sadistic and believable. The role of Vappu Nalbantoglu, who plays his wife, grows and changes with the play. Great work from him as well. The woman, played by Pekka Huotari’s actor Hannula, is like a farce, but that’s what it was meant to be.

I’m always attracted when a play has live music. Here it brought an extra plus.