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Note: No longer in repertoire!
Cast: Helena Haaranen, Vuokko Hovatta,
Jouko Klemettilä, Jyrki Kovaleff,
Hannu Lauri, Tiia Louste, Kari Mattila,
Jari Pehkonen, Matti Olavi Ranin, Heikki Sankari, Aarno Sulkanen, Leena Uotila / Margit Lindeman
Direction: Milko Lehto
Set design: Mimmi Resman
Costumes: Maija Pekkanen
Lighting: Juhani Leppänen
Sound: Mauri Siirala
The prosecutor’s bench is vacantIn addition to his scientific activities, Professor Heikki Ylikangas has built a career as a playwright for twenty years. His Ostrobothnian-focused research has expanded to include research and drama topics dealing with the entire nation. The latest text brings to the stage the fate of the Finnish Jewish refugees who were extradited during the Continuation War, and especially the extradition process. The play was inspired by Elina Sana’s book Luovuetut (2003) and Ylikangas’s own report on the subject to the Government.Set designer Mimmi Resman has ended up with basic furnishings from the 40s, which of course suits a play where words and actions speak. Maija Pekkanen’s costumes follow the lines of the times. – The costume designer must create the illusion of time even for those who do not have their own memory of it. The costume designer helps the actor and is in a way partly responsible for directing the characters. It is especially valuable to costume these kinds of premieres, for which there is no previous model,” says Maija Pekkanen.
Read moreEight destinies charged at the Helsinki City Theatre The common conscience of the people – if there is one – should sound the alarm in real time, but at the latest when analyzing various historical stages. Writer and Professor Heikki Ylikangas’ new play The Eight Chosen Ones goes far back in time and takes a closer look at an event that must be considered a disgrace in Finnish history. Namely, on November 6, 1942, our country’s government handed over to the Germans eight Jewish refugees who were staying in Finland at the time, including children. The collective conscience is not easily relieved by the knowledge that only one of the extradited survived. The birth of the play is based on Elina Sana’s book Luovutetut, which was published a couple of years ago. The book was accompanied by a major controversy, which spurred not only a thorough investigation of the subject, but also its fictional treatment. The premiere of the stage work was a long-awaited cultural event in late winter. The eight elected ones are looking for explanations, showing the decision-makers’ dead end and walking as if on their toes over graves. Will there be an understanding of that? Everyone must answer that personally. The dramatist already has convincing evidence of combining fact and fiction, and structurally this story also works well. The historical figures are carefully defined, the plot meanders like a suspense play. Although the truth is cold, the people involved in the decision are not cold. The romance between the well-known lawyer Paavo Kastari and the Soviet soldier Kerttu Nuorteva is highlighted as influencing the course of events. It is good that the steering has been entrusted to a representative of the new generation. Young people are able to look at things from a distance and, if necessary, also place stage episodes more boldly in the backlight. The anxiety that the course of history produces cannot remain the only gift of theatre, only transferred to the audience. The encounter of human and timeless comic traits in the characters’ behaviour is experiential for the viewer even when operating in otherwise quite serious frameworks. In my opinion, Milko Lehto as a director manages to build a fast-paced theatrical performance, even if it is done by retouching the likenesses of the characters. The writer Hella Wuolijoki, for example, was hardly in any situation such a high-pitched old woman character as Leena Uotila adapts of her, nor was Heinrich Himmler a caricature of the head of the German police force, which Jouko Klemettilä jokingly mastered about the head of the German police force, but nevertheless it is a question of quite lively performances. Not to mention Jari Pehkonen, who puts his comedian skills on the line by sketching a funny but less believable picture of the respected legal scholar Paavo Kastari. Kari Mattila as Arno Anthon, the head of Valpo, gives a tenacious performance that carries excellently from start to finish, and both Matti Olavi Ranin as Lieutenant Ari Kauhanen and Heikki Sankari as Minister of the Interior Toivo Horell provide strong support for this performance. Vuokko Hovatta plays a central role in the story as Nuorteva, as it is used – when contemplating guilt – as a reflection surface above all on Risto Ryti. Neither of them had been given any other options in the fateful stages of their lives. Nuorteva became what was threatened, as President of the Republic, Rytin had to submit to the demand for the extradition of Germany in the difficult situation of the country. Hannu Lauri replied to Rytina with concentration, at times even underlining too much. Hovatta’s progress is deliberately straightforward, he is mostly restrained and cool, as one would expect from a trained spy. Aarno Sulkanen’s interpretation of Abraham Stiller, a representative of the Jewish community, is a fine role, appealing and strongly expressive. Both Mimmi Resman’s stage design and Maija Pekkanen’s costumes communicate in style a time when the episodes now on display come to life.
Read moreThe long shadow of the swastika I knew that Heikki Ylikangas was a brilliant writer. Still, I had It is a surprise how well he has been able to put what he has to say in the form of drama. The eight chosen ones are based on historical facts. Ylikangas does not preaching or giving a presentation. He makes good questions and encourages the viewer to think for themselves. The shadow of the swastika reaches very far. The guilt of the Finns, or Innocence is, of course, one of the key themes of the play. However, Ylikangas’ perspective is much broader. He did not in vain In the script, emphasize the fictional nature of the play. The eight A study on the boundary conditions of morality and ethics has also been chosen. He has written one of the key lines in the Soviet desanti Kerttu Nuorteva’s (Vuokko Hovatta) mouth. Nuorteva justifies Stalin persecutions by destroying them in the approaching great war People potentially disloyal to the Soviet Union. Ylikangas Nuorteva thinks that the Finnish Whites do exactly the same when he defeated the rebellion of the Reds in the spring of 1918. It was not a question of revenge spring, but in the event of a Soviet attack, they became disloyal systematic liquidation of suspected citizens. The first victims of which war are Rwanda’s million murdered Africans or the hundreds of thousands of people from the current massacre in Darfur Are they killed? Why is the killing still going on, and who is it really Interested? These are good questions when we start to evaluate the guilt of historical figures. In recent years, historians have visited the and the consequences. An individual can kill another in anger. To murder millions, you need a machine and a lot of freezing cold logical consideration. Genocides are not committed in emotional turmoil or by chance. Of course, logical thinking does not lead to a rational conclusion if The starting points of the thinking are absurd. Probably no other factor damaged the Germans’ own war effort as much as The extermination of the Jews. This is also what the play’s Jew Stiller (Aarno Sulkanen) wonders. Why God allows such absurd and brutal stupidity to happen? People’s actions are facts of history. There are many motives for these acts more difficult to document reliably. From the point of view of the play’s theme, however, this is an essential question. In Western courts, the reprehensibility of an act depends on its motive. Of course, it was impossible to understand Finland’s wartime leadership at the time something that we still can’t really understand. Ylikangas brings in his play, he nicely brings out the irrational side of this history Himmler (Jouko Klemettilä). It is probably telling that the character is somehow comical. Contemporaries Himmler probably didn’t laugh too much. The steering is tenacious. The young Milko Lehto is a professional. Episodic The internal tension between the scenes of the unfolding story is good. And what is it like directing when you have brilliant actors to direct. However, even from this group, one stands out above the others. Jari Pehkonen SpongeBob Kastari may not look like the real Professor Paavo Kastari at all, but the character in the play, Kastari, is nevertheless very believable. By its very existence, the character proves the role of the actor Pehkonen and playwright Ylikangas’s perceptiveness and knowledge of people . In the play Kastari, the public and the private intersect. The role is Really great. The eight chosen ones were commissioned by the Helsinki City Theatre. Ylikangas conducted a report two years ago at the request of the Prime Minister’s Office whether a thorough investigation should be carried out on wartime renditions. The Government started with Elina Sana’s 2003 The Surrendered book. Ylikangas recommended that a study be carried out, and the play is based on his research carried out for its recommendation.
Read moreMORE SOON! The country is healthy and strong when it is able to tackle the difficult times and solutions of its recent past, tear scabs, want discussion and heal. Finland is, is starting to be.
Read moreOne more story from the last war When it feels like everything possible has already been whipped up on stage many times since our country’s last war, one waits with a little doubt for the play The Eight Chosen Beginnings written by Heikki Ylikangas at the Helsinki City Theatre. The suspicion is unfounded. There is still a perspective that interests me. The text of Elina Sana’s controversial book Luovuetut pohjantudu tackles a painful topic: Why did Finland extradite refugee Jews to German concentration camps in 1942? The decisions of Risto Ryti, Minister of the Interior Toivo Horell and Arno Anthon, the head of the state’s secret police, are examined under Germany’s pressure policy: grain will come if refugees are handed over. The play is mainly talk and analysis of the situation, the decision-makers’ pushing in the face of a difficult situation, and therefore nothing dramatically interesting is created on stage. The facts are tackled with a one-to-one method, leaving no room for an interpretative structure.
Read moreNOT GOOD OR BAD, BUT PEOPLE Heikki Ylikangas’s The Eight Chosen Ones is the theatre of strong menWhen every other actor has to try their words a little at the premiere, you know in the audience that things are not quite right yet. The audience was not disturbed by the dating. Rarely has there been such an intense and listening peace in the auditorium of a city theatre or any theatre as there was during Heikki Ylikangas‘ performance of The Eight Chosen Ones. The charged interpretation was directed by Milko Lehto. Towards the end, the story, which almost developed into an exciting one, carried me away. Even the play’s lessons, the somewhat lecture-like explanatory sequences, did not disturb the viewer’s concentration. In that way, the evening was really a success. Perhaps the theme of forgiveness included in the work itself is also of interest to today’s viewers, as are its basics. When the play’s Risto Ryti pardons Kerttu Nuorteva, who has been arrested as a detainee and sentenced to death, the motive hits sharply both then and perhaps even today. You can’t talk about guilt if you haven’t had any alternatives. Ryti’s definition frees Kerttu Nuorteva, a Soviet agent trained as a spy under the threat of blackmail. With the same sentence, Ryti also absolves himself of guilt for the mass extradition of eight Jews, among other things. Seven of them were eaten by mass destruction in the concentration camp. For the same reasons specified in the play, we modern viewers are probably ready to pardon those who participated in the Finnish process at the time. Or are we? That is what the viewer should ask themselves. However, the commissioned play, built on the basis of Ylikangas’s own research and, among other things, information from Elina Sana’s book Luovutetut, has some difficulties with itself. The title of the play is also misleading in the sense that these chosen ones are hardly encountered. A fairly clean salon play has been written, depicting decision-making. Discussions are available in offices, restaurants and who knows what cabinets. There is even room for romance, but fortunately not to the point of a princess fairy tale. For many, the surprising final twist of the Burst of Love changes everything. The Germans in the performance are pretty one-level jerks. Even domestic heroes or heroines have been left with aftertastes of the cliché. The riddle of the fate of the Jews in the world is approached in an enterprising way, also thanks to Tiia Louste and especially Aarno Sulkanen , who plays Abraham Stiller. You don’t fall for anything unambiguous, as is wise. Ylikangas has diligently eliminated the historical events and characters of the extradition process, but the play has also been left with the stamp of being obligatory. There are roles that are present precisely because of the historical, not the necessity required by the play. For this reason, the roles are also of varying strength, but the strongest ones are definitely full stuff. Kari Mattila does a strong job as Valpo’s Arno Anthon, a decision-maker who agrees to necessity. Mattila acts out his character’s train of thought in a controlled and clear manner, but so does Heikki Sankari as Minister of the Interior Horell and, in particular, Hannu Lauri in the role of Risto Ryti. The amnesty scene towards the end is excellent. Thanks for that also go to Jari Pehkonen, who plays Paavo Kastari who falls in love with the desanti.As Kerttu Nuorteva, Vuokko Hovatta is enduring pathetic with her dull glances, while Leena Uotila in the smallish role of Hella Wuolijoki is almost funny. Perhaps a little lightening was needed for the harsh story. Milko Lehto has been a very good director for this particular play. The young man makes attitudeless, even cool theatre in a good way. The performance shows rather than claims. The director does not talk about the good and the bad. The performance is about people. It is just right for this text. Maija Pekkanen’s costumes are aptly faithful to the time, perhaps also Mimmi Resman’s set design in its brownish ugliness.
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