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Note: No longer in repertoire!
Featuring
Miitta Sorvali (pictured), Hannu Lauri, Kristo Salminen, Petriikka Pohjanheimo, Eeva-Liisa Haimelin, Eppu Salminen
Directed by Milko Lehto, set design by Oskari Torvinen, costumes by Maija Pekkanen, Finnish translation by Kersti Juva
Strength doesn’t help anything when fear and anxiety creep out from under the covers. The fear of facing one’s own death is a completely different kind of research than the study of poems about death. Why does a person only learn when they have to experience it themselves?
Read moreMiitta Sorvali’s top role Man at his most bare, like blood flesh Miitta Sorvali’s character in the play Spirit. A woman scientist whose whole life has been ruled by reason gets ovarian cancer when they fall ill, they have to face the meaning of their emotions and intimacy. The American Margaret Edson’s play at the Helsinki City Theatre does not let the audience go by little. Why should it? Isn’t art the very means by which death and terminal illness can be dealt with? The end result is liberating: death does not It doesn’t feel oppressive. On the other hand, the social aspect of the play is distressing, A topical message in Finland as well – the patient’s position in a large institutional hospital in the stroller. Miitta Sorvali makes Milko Lehto’s direction is a brilliant, touching performance. He knows the levels from sarcastic humour to the presentation of palpable pain.
Read more“… If the serpents are vile / damnation saves, oh! Why not me? / Why do reason, will, the gifts of birth, / the same sin in me make it heavier? / And when grace is easy, and to glory / to God, why does he threaten?” (Excerpt from John Donne’s Sonnet IX. Alice Martin). Margaret Edson’s multidimensional play The Spirit, which premiered on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre just over a week ago, did not have a very favourable starting point; The theatre criticism of the country’s mainstream newspaper frightened a group of potential viewers. Some justifiably, but some certainly unjustified. The Spirit, which tells the story of a transformation in the values of an Oxfordian-educated literary scholar who ignores emotions with intellectuality, is a serious play, not only for the repertoire of this particular theatre. But not distressing, let alone crushing, even though it brings you close to the terminally ill. However, the inevitable, death, has been distanced in the play in many ways – “mercifully” to the spectator-listener. The first episode in particular is mainly characterised by the play on the verbal and intellectual virtuosity of the protagonist, lyric professor Vivian Bearing, which in the vernacular can of course also be called nitpicking. The content analysis, close reading of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, a wonderful sample of English poetry from the early 17th century, is enjoyable. Brilliant text, brilliantly presented. Besides, it also serves the play. The illusion of the omnipotence of genius is an essential part of the development trajectory, the spiritual growth of the protagonist, the death of pride. As if to be on the safe side, the director has taken the anxiety-reducing distancing into a typography that approaches comedy, at worst to the point of corniness. However, the hollowness of the routine practices of “treatment” that calls into question the patient’s dignity is probably not very far from the reality of hospitals. In the depiction of the approach to the end, authenticity has been discreetly avoided. The exhaustion and cutting drift further away that corresponds to the reality of the sick person has been left out. Still, I don’t recommend the play to just anyone. But to any thinking person who has had the right attitude and tuned in. Death as such is part of his life as well. Text: PERTTI PIISPANEN Margaret Edson: The Spirit (Wit). Nordic premiere at Helsinki City Theatre 29.3.2001. Translated by Kersti Juva, directed by Milko Lehto, set design by Oskari Torvinen, costumes by Maija Pekkanen, starring Miitta Sorvali.
Read moreAt the end of March, two plays about university milieus, which explore the relationships between science and life, art and truth, premiered in Helsinki theatres. The play The Spirit, written by Margaret Edson, performed at the Helsinki City Theatre, examines the last weeks of a professor of literature who has been diagnosed with cancer, which he spends in a technical hospital milieu. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play has attracted attention especially for its depiction of the harsh conditions of dying in modern society. Professor Vivian Bearing is a literary scholar dedicated to John Donne, in whose life everything else has been secondary to his career. The play depicts moments from the main character’s life in retrospect – conversations with teachers during his studies, sparkling lectures and moments of conversations with students. These scenes convey not only Vivian Bearing’s complete sacrifice to her field, but also a sense of superiority and emotional poverty. Bearing’s character can be interpreted in the light of the classic Faust myth, in which the high price paid for knowledge leads to the loss of other values. On his deathbed, however, Bearing is in the same state of uncertainty as any of us – or perhaps worse.
Read moreAn eternal path of studyAtlanta elementary school teacher Margaret Edson arouses sympathy not only with his debut play Henki (1995), also with his announcement that he will not do the following
Read moreTapio VanhataloEeva-Liisa Haimelin and Miitta Sorvali in the play Spirit.Margaret Edson’s play The Spirit (Wit) has certainly earned all the awards it has received, including the Dramatists Guild and Pulizer awards. The play tells the story of a professor of poetry who has dedicated his life to research becoming an object of research himself, turning into the ovaries and abdominal cavity, which serve as a breeding ground for widespread cancer. Research and the vocation of a researcher, as well as the encounter between illness and inevitable death, are the central themes of the play, and as a result, the overall tone of the work is exceptionally unemotional. Not cold, however, but intellectual, focused and thoughtful. I would like to call the main role of the play a downright modern, female King Lear. Firstly, because of the lonely greatness with which the role dominates the play, secondly, because of the magnitude of the renunciation, weakness, mortality, surrender and loneliness that the protagonist has to face and accept. The third reason is the extremely subtle, mostly understatement-like criticism or questioning with which the play relates to the current, Western values centered on research and specialization.
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