Review: Kolmen kimppa

Theatre review: This is what can happen in a relationship when one person lacks courage and the other lacks cruelty

Comedy is a difficult genre, but director Liisa Mustonen and her team at the Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Pasila hit the nerve of laughter in the French Clément Michel’s play Threesome (originally called Un semaine… pas plus!).

Everything in the performance is successful – Mustonen’s direction, Reita Lounatvuori’s Finnish translation, the staging in its entirety, and the acting of Jarkko Niemi, Elina Hietala and Olli Rahkonen . Hietala is one of Mustonen’s trusted actors. The director also has a keen eye for male roles, and Niemi and Rahkonen continue this excellent tradition.

Speed and verbal wrangling

In his directing, Mustonen has often dealt with love and relationships, such as Frankie and Johnny, which he directed for Teatteri Jurkka, and Open Alliance, in which he also acted. As an actor, she was also seen in Pasi Lampela’s marriage drama The Final Stop.

Mustonen’s work is always bloody and strong. And so it is now. Even though the lyrics of Threesome are verbal rejoicing, there is a risk of overdoing or underdoing too much. Or headlong into clichés. Now we don’t even go over or over the top when a man can’t leave a woman because he lacks courage, as is typical for men. Similarly, a woman is not able to be mean because she lacks cruelty in a way that is typical of a woman.

It would take courage for Pauli (Jarkko Niemi) to be able to leave his common-law wife Sofia (Elina Hietala), whom she has grown tired of during the three months they have lived together. And Sofia would need cruelty to stop Paul’s nagging behavior. To speed up the divorce, Pauli recruits his friend Martin (Olli Rahkonen), who will live with the couple for a week. During that time, Sofia is supposed to have enough and leave.

The male-female clichés in the play text could be annoying, but that doesn’t happen here when they are expressed in a sufficiently headless way at the appropriate point. This is what happens, for example, in Paul and Martin’s rehearsals.

The performance is full of pace and twists and turns and verbal play. Pauli foams at the mouth about different ways to make Sofia angry, but the tone changes as soon as Sofia arrives. And Martin is supposed to be horrible, but he’s the perfect man who cooks, does crafts and loves. Sofia finds the good in everything. Hietala, Niemi and Rahkonen keep up with the pace of the performance perfectly and precisely.

Threesome is a pure funny comedy, where the best thing is that everything is dosed in just the right amount.