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Note: No longer in repertoire!
In collaboration with Tampereen Työväen Teatteri
Cast:
Esko Roine, Mari Vainio, Asko Sarkola, Antti Litja, Seppo Maijala, Miitta Sorvali, Heidi Herala, Eppu Salminen, Petriikka Pohjanheimo, Mika Nuojua, Hannu Lindholm
Director:
Neil Hardwick
Costumes:
Maija Pekkanen
Set design:
Hannu Lindholm
Helsinki City Theatre and Tampere Workers’ Theatre have teamed up their theatre directors and staged a co-production of Ray Cooney’s political joke Munaako herra ministeri or Political Pot, which is the guaranteed name of the British farce, on the main stages of both of them. This is not the first time the work has been performed on Finnish stages. It has previously been performed under the names Valheessa vara parem, Hilvaton hotelli and Säpinää seurahuonella. It had its Finnish premiere at the Swedish Theatre under the name Lögner, lik och lust already in 1991. However, the play is easily topical and localized eternal stuff. It works like a supplementary assignment for an exercise book: only the names of the political actors in the text and the name of the event hotel are changed to match the city of the performance, and the party affiliations of the characters in the play can also be easily changed. A clever concept. The Minister of the National Coalition Party is messing around at the Helsinki City Theatre. However, there is nothing political or especially social in this pot, because politics in the play only represents the frame of reference in which the people are the people’s eyes, so that when they stagger on the edge of a hole they have dug themselves, they can be sincerely gloating in the audience. In a basic democratic Finland, where double standards do not have quite as deep and lush roots as in England, a minister-level sex scandal does not have as strong a tickling potential as such. (Perhaps because we have not yet seen such a thing, whether it is the decency of politicians or the slackness of the yellow press.) So, despite the local and current affairs adaptation, the supranational template shines through, and I know I’m laughing at something that is actually funny rather than someone else’s opinion.
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