Review: Ilon aika
Review: The successful play Time of Joy will have a visually detached stage production at the Helsinki City Theatre
When you sit down in the auditorium of the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, the atmosphere is unreal. The space glows bright pink as a huge reddish fabric spreads across the space from floor to ceiling.
After a while, the mother, played by Heidi Herala, and her daughter (Mitra Matouf), who has come to visit her, step onto the stage. In the glow of fluorescent lights, a parent and a child begin to discuss their relationship and life while waiting for the third member of the family, Aksle.
Arne Lygre is a successful and award-winning Norwegian playwright whose plays have been translated into several languages. The successful play Time of Joy (Tid for glede 2022), which will be premiered at the City Theatre, is part of the World on Stage project, which supports the translation of stage works into Finnish.
THE value and significance of the project can be sensed in Ari-Pekka Lahti’s successful Finnish translation, which brings out the original text, which plays with Lygre’s layers and different moods. The performance is directed by Tatu Hämäläinen, who has also built an international career.
The mother and daughter’s conversation in the bosom of nature is prolonged when the family’s son is late.
However, other people show up. The intense couple, played by Vappu Nalbantoglu and Rauno Ahonen, is torn apart. The brothers (Sauli Suonpää and Jouko Klemettilä) have once again come with their stepmother (Ursula Salo) to find a burial place for their late father.
The group gathered by coincidences gets a peek into each other’s relationships. Similar clothes and white bob-length wigs make the cast comically quirky. The characters stand out as individuals, but at the same time they are a strange homogeneous mass.
Hämäläinen has directed the actors to move around the space seemingly freely, to react to each other in a way that feels spontaneous.
What follows is a series of meaningful or insignificant moments that delve into human life, ordinary fleeting chatter, surprising connections. Sadness, joy and confusion, life. In the scenes, the unreal and the mundane shake hands.
Soon, Aksle (Rasmus Slätis) also arrives in the middle of it all, who says that he has decided to disappear and break off his relationships with his former life completely. In the second half, the focus is on the house party and the people Aksle left behind.
AKSLE’s decision to disappear without explanation is a tragic element that imposes a heaviness on the performance’s many comedic events. The softly melancholic Aksle of Slätis is even oppressive in its unwavering decision.
Against this background, the name Time of Joy begins to feel a little ironic. If a child decides to disappear, what opportunities do loved ones have for genuine joy?
Herala plays a memorable role as the outspoken mother of Aksle, who tries to find answers to her son’s decision and at the same time understands. Herala’s Mother often says out loud the very things that are usually left at the level of thought. The charismatic Matouf also plays a great role as Aksle’s sister.
Norwegian set designer Chrisander Brun, who is responsible for the performance’s ultra-stylish visual world, has seized on the originality of Lygre’s play.
The scenes of the first half are placed among a large pink canvas that envelops the scenes and characters. The heavy canvas gets tangled between people, stumbling over itself, sometimes completely covering the actors.
The second half rises in front of the audience as grandiose stage images, strong contrasts of colours and a wildly rotating stage.
BETWEEN the text that plays with styles and extremes and the stylized look of the performance, you can also sense friction.
Bruni’s scenography and Hämäläinen’s direction enclose the text, which is not precisely focused on time and place, in its own dense world. The more delicate tones of Lygre’s play seem to be overshadowed by the strong visual style, especially in the second half.
Despite the well-defined characters and relationships, the performance does not aim for a traditional story arc. Rather, Time of Joy is a study of human relationships and their complex nature, as well as the difficult situations in which we humans find ourselves.
In life, things often happen without explanations or end texts, without a manual on what would be the right way to act or react. In the end, it may be the striving forward, the attempt at life and even joy that is perhaps meaningful.