Nykypäivä, 3.9.2004
Review
Jaakko Kaartinen-Koutaniemi
The all-me immediately revue can be seen as a sharp satire
Who’s laughing And for whom?
Helsinki City Theatre’s experiment with revue offers an absolutely fine flow of dance and music, as well as sketch entertainment that strokes the hair.
JAAKKO KAARTINEN-KOUTANIEMIPHOTOS TAPIO VANHATALOThe Helsinki City Theatre has prepared a revue for its big stage with the help of an unusually renowned group of artists. The performance is based on a long list of names as a guarantee in advance.Comedy artillery heavyweights Riitta Havukainen, Pekka Huotari, Risto Kaskilahti, Mikko Kivinen, Esko Roine, Ulla Tapaninen and Leena Uotila will take the stage. Especially Maija Kalaoja and Antti Timonen sing sweetly, music composed by Iiro Rantala is played by the extended Trio Töykeät. Neil Charnock’s choreographies are danced by Helsinki Dance Company. The scriptwriting team includes Claes Andersson, Outi Popp and Henri Kapulainen, among others. In addition, the set design and costumes are top-notch by Ralf Forsström.The heavy staffing raises expectations high. However, a revue is not something quite common in Finnish theatre. What you expect may not be what is offered. Everything is surprising to me right away in several ways.
Brilliant danceand music
According to the dictionary definition, a revue is an entertaining stage performance built up of separate sketches, the main content of which is stage splendor, spectacular dance performances and music, and which occasionally satirically comments on current events.The revue of the City Theatre is exactly according to the definition. The costumes are theatre, but the set is large-scale and magnificent. Investments have been made in stage equipment and it works tip-top. A lot of time and stage space has been given to dance, and for good reason. Helsinki Dance Company is a very good dance company and moved by Charnock, the bold, energetic and even slightly serious numbers delight and entertain.The dance numbers together with Rantala’s music tie the other parts of the revue together very successfully. They do not remain fillers, but are actually the actual framework of the entire performance. It follows that Everything for Me Immediately is enjoyable to watch and listen to. Erik Siikasaari’s fat-bass runs alone make me happy.
Satire on the Modern Age
The sketch side of the revue is primarily a matter of taste. Some people laugh at things that make their neighbours frown. Everything for me immediately moves around quite a bit of bad humor. There are hardly any harmless crash jokes, but they are mainly related to bad taste, prejudices, that someone is doing badly and someone else is losing everything.Why is that?
According to the bona fide principle, every philosophical theory should first be read from a point of view that is benevolently advantageous to it.The benevolent interpretation of the script of the revue Allt mulle heti is more philosophical, i.e. socio-ethical, than purely entertainment-oriented. This revue can be said to march in front of the viewer, caricatured to the extreme, the world of tabloid entertainment that feeds the more low-minded ideas of Finns from one weekday to the next. They say: This is what this is like, look at it. Isn’t it laughing?In the synthetic, commercialized modern age, Beckett’s Godot is transformed into a mobile phone advertisement. This happens every day. Isn’t acting with exaggerated gestures straight from this Finland?Everything for me is a satire of the entertainment of a lonely and harsh world. In other words, it satirizes itself and its viewer. This is daring, because in the end it makes the viewer’s position a bit problematic. If you laugh at these suspicious things, what does it say about you? If you find them too alienating, the sketch side doesn’t work, and the revue starts to limp.However, if the task of art is to hold up the mirror in front of the audience, the Helsinki City Theatre seems to have succeeded in this ultimate task.
Finish at a fast pace
Purely as a stage performance, five of the contents, Everything for Me Immediately starts slowly and progresses unnecessarily slowly. It is only the second act that puts the pedal to the metal. Then there is plenty of speed, also in the rhythm of the scenes.Especially the dance theatre of the second act is so nice to follow that when we get to the end, I wish it would be postponed a bit.It will be interesting to see how the script will come to life from one play to the next. The articles commenting on the day’s topics are likely to be replaced by new ones when the previous day’s newspaper gets old.Polygonal Everything for me is right away. No one has to like it.
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