Review: Kolmen kimppa

Threesome @ Helsinki City Theatre

Pauli (Jarkko Niemi) is tired of his girlfriend Sofia (Elina Hietala), but he doesn’t want to be a terrible person and leave her. So Pauli has a brilliant idea and tells his friend Martin (Olli Rahkonen) to live with them. A shared apartment, it’s going to be fun. Really nice! Except that the purpose is to get Sofia annoyed with the threesome and get out of the place without Paul having to leave her. All kinds of plans are made and misunderstandings arise, and of course not everything goes as you imagine. Who will be the first to lose their nerves and how the threesome will start spinning, will become clear as the story progresses.

Oh well! Here’s how! Absolutely amazing! The threesome is a pretty perfect comedy, I liked it very much and enjoyed it very much in the audience. Written by Clément Michel , the performance proceeds rhythmically, laughs and makes you laugh, keeps you in your grip and manages to be fresh without being too fluffy. Reita Lounatvuori’s brilliant Finnish translation aptly brings humour to the Finnish language, and the text bends to be youthful and suitable for the mood of the performance. Under the direction of Liisa Mustonen , this threesome runs excellently, Mustonen succeeds in directing the characters nicely and the performance progresses smoothly, the package is together and everything works. Tellervo Syrjäkari’s stylish set design and costumes suitable for the characters support the story well, and the set design provides an excellent setting for the story.

The trio of actors is great, their cooperation is seamless and everyone does a great job. The relationships between the characters feel genuine and believable. Jarkko Niemi is an insanely good Pauli, a really good job and all the expressions and gestures are on point, oh how enjoyable it is to watch such smooth acting! Brilliantly captured, Paul’s agony with leaving Sofia and irritation with how things are starting to go. Olli Rahkonen’s Martin is a really nice, nice guy, and Rahkonen makes Martin really pleasant. But he gets to let off steam and go on a rampage in his role, it’s an amazing scene when Martin then explodes, quite a great job from Rahkonen, as in all the other scenes. Elina Hietala also succeeds excellently, her Sofia is understanding and friendly, and seems to endure all kinds of oddities, but Sofia also starts to get suspicious when events get very strange. Hietala does a great job in his role.

After seeing this on Twitter, I realized that I have finally given up my comedy prejudices, because before I didn’t like comedies or go to see them much. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of good comedies over the years and liked them, so I haven’t avoided comedies even though I haven’t particularly cared for them. Now (or already some time ago) I have given up this stupid habit completely, comedies are regularly on the watch list and what is the point of watching if they are like this. So I liked this very much, as I already said. This is a really smooth and fun story, with button choices for the roles and rhythmic, gripping direction, I guess that’s all you need. Even though I love deep drama, gloom and difficulties, they don’t have to be in every story, this one shows, like many other lighter shows. I had a great time in the stands, I had a great time and I want to see this again. I had a really happy feeling after the performance, and I still smile.

I can’t really say anything constructive about this, I think everything worked excellently, the actors did an amazingly skilled job and played well together, the direction held the package together well and the performance was a successful two-hour package of laughter therapy. A really good, nicely brought comedy to the stage, fresh and clever, entertaining, full of really funny humor and good solutions. So nothing bad to say, Threesome works perfectly in its genre and is a stylistically pure, excellent comedy.