Review: Röda rummet
“Eklundh portrays both submission and the need for control, the vulnerable and the ruthless, equally natural – with a charisma and an intense, penetrating gaze that sometimes carries the entire performance. “
Intensive interaction carries the Red Room
Boundaries are tested and shifted in Lilla Teatern’s well-polished Red Room.
The premise is as simple as it is brilliant. The young and now homeless writer Kaj Erik has just moved home from Berlin with his tail between his legs. While drunk, he writes a newspaper ad in which he is looking for an affordable apartment. In exchange, he promises to write a book.
It is a joke with both serious and desperate undertones, which sets the tone for the entire story. Through the advertisement, Kaj-Erik gets in touch with the eccentric gentleman Aimo Kangas, who promises a dream apartment at a fashionable address in Ullanlinna. The move and writing soon take him deeper and deeper into a new world, both class-wise and sexually. Into the red room, where the boundaries between domination and submission shift and playfulness is soon mixed with seriousness.
Powerful simplicity
It is one of the most uplifted Finnish-Swedish novels of recent years, which is now being given new life at Lilla Teatern. Kaj Korkea-aho’s novel from 2021, which cheekily borrows its name from August Strindberg’s classic, was nominated for both the Runeberg Prize and the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
On Lillan’s stage, the story has been allowed to grow in a fertile environment under the direction of director Milja Sarkola. K. Rasila’s set design is powerful in its simplicity, with many creative solutions – even if some transitions feel a bit clumsy. When Pekka Pitkänen’s lighting design plays across the stage, it is sometimes a stripped-down clinic, sometimes a splendid cathedral, sometimes a suggestive bunker. At the same time, it is more than clear how much is just a façade.
The façade crumbles
The latter applies to both the environment and the people in it. Just like in the novel, there is something that chafes with Aimo Kangas from the beginning. Sometimes he appears searching, almost insecure, sometimes as if in full control of the situation. The interactions with the young “assistant” Emmanuel open the door to a darker side of his personality from an early age. In the play version, the impression is reinforced that the audience also gets to see Aimo from the outside, both alone and in relation to Kaj Erik.
As the paint in the red room begins to peel, we also see Aimo Kangas’ façade crumble. The dominance of social situations, the power and the suggestive charm, is soon replaced by something desperate, almost psychotic, which reveals the duality of the character. At the same time as he has an enormous need for control, he also shares, according to him, the universal human need for submission. Even during the BDSM sessions in the red room, when he is at his most physically vulnerable, he exercises his social power over Emmanuel and later Kaj Erik.
Impressive design
Aimo Kangas is one of the most well-written and complicated characters to emerge from Finland-Swedish literature in recent years. Bringing him to life on stage cannot have been an easy task. Riko Eklundh still impresses in his interpretation of the character. He portrays both submission and the need for control, the vulnerable and the ruthless, equally natural – with a charisma and an intense, penetrating gaze that at times carries the entire performance.
Several of the evening’s strongest moments arise in the intense interplay between Eklundh and Mikko Kauppila, which aptly portrays Kaj Erik’s blind desperation and calculating flirting. In this version, the complicated and changing relationship between Kaj Erik and Aimo Kangas is left alone in the center. Without in any way diminishing the other actors’ performances, the other characters are mostly reduced to a mirror for the audience to look at both the relationship and their own reactions through. That said, Alexander Wendelin in particular impresses in the role of Emmanuel, who, in addition to the main roles, is the character who gets to develop the most and who feels the most alive.
Important story
As with most dramatizations of novels, it is important to be careful not to compare too much with the original. Beforehand, I still had some fears about how well the Red Room could be transferred to the stage. The plot and the strong characters are certainly strong on their own two feet – but much of the novel’s strength is based on Korkea-aho’s confident language and clear vision, which is evident not least in his namesake Kaj Erik’s inner story and monologue.
In the dramatization, parts of Kaj Erik’s background and character seem to have been scaled down, in favor of a stronger focus on Aimo Kangas’ story. It is told in detail, including through monologues in which Eklundh seems to read almost directly from the novel. In many ways, this is welcome – at the same time as I would have liked to have seen a little more focus on Kaj Erik’s story as well. Now I may feel that his character becomes unnecessarily two-dimensional.
The story that is actually told is nevertheless strong and well-polished. In The Red Room, issues of power and submission, of consent and male sexuality, are woven together in both a natural and captivating way. Just like in Korkea-aho’s novel, much also feels both fresh and unexplored. The awkward laughter – and later the printed silence – in the auditorium testify to the urgency of this type of story, which has all too often been silenced to death. As Kaj Erik asks himself at one point, when he stands in the middle of the red room: “What stories do we not tell to hide what we actually want to tell?”