Review: Mies, joka rakasti järjestystä
Taneli Mäkelä shines as a lovable jerk – This play brings tears to my eyes
Olavi is basically a warm-hearted man, but he is broken by the death of his wife. Photo: Tuomo Manninen.
A Finnish man doesn’t cry, but in this play I did. Helsinki City Theatre’s comedy The Man Who Loved Order touches us in all its simplicity.
There is only Taneli Mäkelä on stage, a few chairs and a piano. You don’t need an insane amount of props or sets to tell this story.
Mäkelä creates most of the props with his own hands in the viewer’s imagination. The viewer can see in their own mind a hanging rope that Mäkelä’s character places on a hook on the ceiling, and a gun whose barrel he points at his own head.
The story of the play is dark, as the hanging rope and the gun I mentioned show. At the same time, its undertone is immensely bright and bubbly joyful.
From one scene to the next, the emotional spectrum is scrolled from one end to the other. Sometimes the viewer laughs and sometimes just gets shocked. Finally, tears come to my eyes and my jaw starts to tremble.
The play is like life in all its absurdity. It’s about the moment in life when everything starts to be grounded and how life goes on in spite of everything.
The Devil and Olavi
The authors Fredrik Backman and Tuomas Kyrö are easy to compare. Both have written their works about an old jerk who does not swallow modern nonsense without biting.
However, the Finnish Devil is a poor worker in the countryside compared to the Swedish engineer Olav, who lives in a city. On the other hand, Olavi is at least as sympathetic a character as the Troublemaker.
Taneli Mäkelä brilliantly interprets Olavi’s mental landscape and all the other roles in the play at the same time. Olavi is a meticulous man by nature, as the title of the play suggests. He loves order and routine.
There are plenty of such men and women in Finland as well. I’d guess that everyone recognizes a character in their own close circle who has frustrating character traits. Nevertheless, you can’t help but love that jerk.
Olavi’s life is overshadowed by the death of his wife and unemployment. A man doesn’t want to find his own place when dark thoughts are running through his head and life has no meaning.
Within the walls of the home, the wife’s gaze follows in every photo. Even the piano plays only one tune, which reminds Olavi of his wife.
A dozen different roles
The humor of the play is born from the collision of different generations and cultures. An Iranian woman, Parvaneh, moves into Olavi’s terraced house company with her family.
Olavi is not a racist, but the new situation needs to be digested. Especially since Parvaneh’s Swedish husband knocks into Olavi’s mailbox as his first job.
Parvaneh’s colourful personality offers Taneli Mäkelä the opportunity to really tear things up. The play highlights various prejudices related to immigrants, such as different eating habits and temperaments. However, they are not an obstacle to friendship.
Gender minorities are not a problem either. Olavi accommodates Mirsad in his home, who has come out of the closet. Mirsad cannot go home because his father is shocked by the boy’s announcement.
One can only admire Taneli Mäkelä’s performance. He plays a dozen roles, from a three-year-old child to a retired wife. Mäkelä empathizes with his roles so strongly even in the dialogues that it is easy to follow who is talking about the characters. Each character has their own tone of voice and gestures.
The play manages to make you laugh many times. However, the best sign of success is the tears that start to run down your cheeks. They show that Taneli Mäkelä succeeded in his work.