Review: Suomen hauskin mies

Suosalo makes fun as Toivo Parikka – Heikki Ranta melted the hearts of viewers

The year 1918 was a rough time in Finnish history, when the Reds and the Whites fought each other. Many people were killed and the hatred was really fierce. There were also Finnish actors and theatre makers, whose own story is the funniest man in Finland.

Since the autumn, the Helsinki City Theatre’s repertoire has been running a play based on a text by Mikko Reitala and Heikki Kujanpää, The Funniest Man in Finland, starring actor and Red Chief Toivo Parikka. Parikka is imprisoned and sent to a prison camp where there are also other people from the Parikka Theatre.

The head of the prison camp gets the idea of a king and asks Parika and his companions to make a play. As a reward for the play, the group would save their lives. The prison camp also houses Jaeger Lieutenant Alfred Nyborg, who greatly admires Parikka. Nyborg brings his own spice to the play, as does Captain Hjalmar Kalm, who has his own plans for his career development.

The Funniest Man in Finland is a slightly comedic tale of the dark times in the early days of Finland’s independence. While the story is very sad, it is also extremely funny and captivating. Under Heikki Kujanpää’s direction, the play has not become a mourning hymn, but a funny two-and-a-half-hour play, during which the audience gets to laugh several times.

The fact that Toivo Parikka is played by Martti Suosalo, the father and mother of Finnish comedy, does not diminish the test of the nerves of laughter. With Risto Kaskilahti and Jari Pehkonen as well as the awesome Pekka Huotari, the table setting is definitely complete. Rauno Ahonen as Captain Kalmina adds his own spice to the play, and of course we should not forget his delightful, but at the same time slightly disgusting wife, Vappu Nalbantoglu.

The aforementioned creators were already expected to have fun and make the audience laugh from start to finish, as they are already experienced veterans in the field of entertainment and theatre. As a new acquaintance, the audience was introduced to Heikki Ranta, the young man who plays Jaeger Lieutenant Alfred Nyborg. Ranta already melted people’s hearts last spring as a young student at the Theatre Academy in the role of Kirka, but now at the latest she lifted herself into the hearts of the audience for good.

In his role as Nyborg, Ranta showed that he is indeed a skilled actor who can also transform into any role. Kirka was a character from a completely different planet than the jaeger lieutenant, and Ranta did a great job of this role as well. If last spring he was already close to becoming my favorite actor, now at the latest he made his breakthrough into my favorite actor, for whom I can predict a very great career as an actor.