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Note: No longer in repertoire!
Cast: Petja Lähde, Jaakko Saariluoma and Eero Saarinen / Tommi Auvinen
Finnish translation: Salla Simukka
Direction: Tommi Auvinen
Set design: Antti Mattila
Costume design: Sari Salmela
Lighting design: Teppo Saarinen
Sound design: Ari-Pekka Saarikko
An adopted child brings a surprise Swedish author Michael Druker’s successful play Paavo 1.5 about a gay couple’s adoption that goes wrong avoids stereotypes. It is not cliché homosexuals who are marched onto the stage, but ordinary people with their problems. There are many small, interesting stories in the play, such as the withered limo fig, the secret of which is revealed in the final meters of the play. Petja Lähde and Jaakko Saariluoma make a snappy and unemphasized comedy. At the premiere, director Tommi Auvinen jumps in nimbly to replace Eero Saarinen , who has fallen ill.
Read morePAAVO CAME TO PASILAThe Swedish author’s story has been inspired by an advertisement in the newspaper of the Social Welfare Board, which revealed that at least one of the members of the people’s home, which was otherwise considered so happy, was without an everyday home at the time. A man in his thirties who lived in a nursing home was in the same position as many summer cats in the autumn. Where can I find a good family for a proper tom?Druker, a versatile theatre man, created a kind of fictitious background for the advertisement. It became a story of its own, the play Patrik 1.5, which has been well received in theaters and has also inspired the filmmaker. Ella Lemhagen’s film of the same name recently premiered.In the Finnish translation, Patrik turned into Paavo. Jari and Martti, who live in a registered partnership, want to have an adopted child, and I wonder if a stork will emerge from somewhere that throws boys around with a wide age range. He had to be one and a half years old. I turned fifteen years old.
Read moreAN ENTERTAINING IMPLEMENTATION FROM A RELAXED TEXTLet’s assume that Patrik 1.5, written by the Swedish Mikael Druker, had seen the light of day sometime in the mid-1980s and had been freshly translated into Finnish and brought to some Finnish stage. It would have been guaranteed to be a slapstick mess. “Gay comedy is overwhelming in the theatre!” “A male couple adopted a punk boy in a controversial play!” the tabloid sales announcers would have shouted from every corner. The public sections would have been filled with comments on “this is what we need to support with taxpayers’ money”.However, Druker did not write his play until the middle of the next decade as a kind of statement on the debate on the adoption rights of gay couples in his home country at the time. At that time, Finnish law did not even include the registration of same-sex partnerships. The “debate” on the right to adopt only began in this decade.Now everything is different. Homosexuality has become commonplace in Finland as well – and at the same time it has also become more entertaining. Throws about quota homosexuals in TV entertainment are starting to be real stuff. On the surface, Finland is a tolerant country in relation to gender minorities. That is why the Finnish version of Druker’s play , Paavo 1.5 , does not raise eyebrows even at a meeting of the board of directors of Alma Media or the Oulu diocesan meeting, to throw assumptions at random.It’s actually a shame. It’s always good for theatre that there’s a bit of war going on around it. Paavo 1.5 has already had several productions in Finnish theatres, and I haven’t heard even a little fuss – not even about the Finnish premiere at the Rovaniemi City Theatre four years ago.
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