“I’m very drawn to making comedy”
The Security Guard is a fast-paced and raucous comedy about the modern world and the characters we can see around us in very high offices. Screenwriter and director Pasi Lampela promises that the performance starring Martti Suosalo and Katja Küttner will offer some sparkling dialogue.
In The Security Man, which premieres in October, Antti Granqvist, the raucous son of a wealthy industrial family, prepares for the date of his life, but he is surprised by a security guard hired by his father, who says that they are not going anywhere now. Antti’s family is being blackmailed, and the lives of family members are in danger. This results in a clash between two people from completely different backgrounds.
“Extortion cases are a reality in Finland as well. The Vastaamo case or the kidnapping of the heiress of the Herlin industrial family by a lawyer, screenwriter and director Pasi Lampela points out.
“The scourge of our time is the definition of everything through simplistic, artificial and deliberate misunderstandings. In The Security Guard , this situation is dismantled and shown that people really need each other. You have to have the courage to leap over even the big chasms.
Despite its serious subject matter, The Security Guard is still a comedy that surprises its viewers.
“As visible, well-known and versatile an actor as Martti Suosalo is, he has not been seen in this type of role,” Lampela says.
Suosalo plays a high-level playboy, an aging donjuan who feels like the hero of his own life. He unapologetically implements his own vision of his life.
“I’ve written and directed quite a lot of dramas, but I’ve always felt a great attraction to comedies. I’m not enthusiastic about conventional contemporary farces, but the outrageous and madness of Molière’s comedies, for example, reach completely different dimensions and make people always drizzle with laughter. The relevance of his portrayal and his understanding of the stage and performance are staggering.
The City Theatre’s veteran
The Security Guard is already Lampela’s seventh premiere at the City Theatre.
“The City Theatre has been a really important building for me throughout the years. I’ve done a lot of different things here.
In addition to his premieres, Lampela has also produced key classics in many theatres. How can you always find new perspectives on them?
“My starting point is to understand what writers like Tolstoy, Bergman or Williams are writing about, and to try to identify something essential about myself and the society in which I live in their work. You have to have the courage to dig into the bottom mud.
“I really appreciate the fact that I’ve been able to make classics like that. They have enormous potential and are explosive theatre.
The king of theatre
In Lampela’s opinion, the playwright-director equation is a kind of king of theatre.
“You are responsible for everything yourself as the captain of the ship, and then you sail or sink. The author cannot hide behind the director’s back, and the director cannot blame the author when they are one and the same person.
For Lampela, her childhood and teenage experiences of playing in a football team and playing in a band showed surprising similarities to theatre.
“In the midst of its psychological and social themes, theatre is actually a very musical genre. Certain rhythms and energies must be made to work through the actors in space, time and space, just like when playing together. Even in a football team, everyone has their own role in the strategic whole. It’s really a theatrical and theatrical activity. That’s where it all starts.
Text Kari Martiala