Review: Min fantastiska väninna
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Elena Ferrante’s My Fantastic Friend, directed by Riikka Oksanen, is a textbook example of what theatre is like at its best. The authors know what to tell, how and to whom. Lilla Teatern’s production is a team effort, where everyone is given a place on stage and the ensemble alternates between supporting roles.
Elena Ferrante’s fantastic story about Lenú Greco and Lila Cerullo is gaining traction for many reasons. The series of novels called The Naples Quartet highlights friendship. The focus is on the girls’ upbringing in a vulnerable environment, Naples, the dynamics between the girls, and later the women. The men are tragicomic anti-heroes at the same time as they are not blamed.
The three-and-a-half-hour production at Lilla Teatern feels long in a good way. That it feels this way is largely thanks to April De Angeli’s concentrated dramatization, which has been adapted by Juho Gröndahl and Riikka Oksanen.
Being a friend is an active act
The dramatization focuses on the relationship between the patiently working, less talented but still clever Lenú and Lila, who is like a shooting star. Lila is underprivileged to an even greater degree than Lenú. In turns, they support and parasitize each other in both love and work.
Under Riikka Oksanen’s perceptive direction, Cecilia Paul portrays Lila’s person and life. She does it inexorably consistently: a girl who bursts but is not subdued. Paul shines, her gaze, muscles and habitus hold the audience in an iron grip. Pia Andersson’s Lenú makes a class trip from Naples to Florence. She is more fragile, but the one who tactically snatches ideas. She illustrates the development of society and feminism from 1952 in Italy and Europe. Her indulgent treatment of the men, her apparent adaptation is finely calibrated.
From object to subject
Lilla Teatern’s production is a team effort, everyone is given a place on stage and the ensemble alternates between supporting roles. The approach illustrates how power and powerlessness both persist and circulate.
Joachim Wigelius’ slippery Donato Sarratore and hilarious parody of Mark Levengood in the role of interviewer on a scandalous author’s performance deserve praise.
The scene between Lenú and Donato Sarratore on the beach is an example of how a moment can be defined with the help of skilled directing and professional actors. The audience really understands what a key role the moment plays for the person involved – Lenú exposes herself and uses the experience to distance herself, write about it, shield and make art. She goes from object to subject and it is an active act.
Another supporting character that deserves to be highlighted is the soft Sanna Majuri. Like Melina, Pasquale and a few others, she shows how plasticity is a winning concept. She is subdued and knows it, but that does not deprive her of her dignity.
Anonymity gives freedom
My fantastic friend, the book quartet, the TV series and the theatre production are fantastic for their feminism, for their universality in that they focus on the details and – last but not least – because the author (or man, as has been speculated) is anonymous. Anonymity is a strength because it gives freedom, it frees us from corruption and brings us back to the personal, truly touching story of our lives and the lives of others.
In conclusion, I can say that the men in the auditorium seemed to enjoy the premiere as much as the women. Women have always embraced men’s stories. There is nothing to say that the reverse does not apply.