There’s still time to love
Seventy-year-old friends Sirkka, Eini, Erika and Paula gather weekly at Paula’s vintage shop to catch up. One night, Paula asks others if they have ever thought about trying Tinder.
At first, everyone laughs, but then the conversation turns more serious and the four decide to give love another chance. When they dare to say their wishes out loud, life suddenly begins to respond to them.
“Wrinkled Roses is a story about love and the power of friendship, about the fact that we humans need other people. It is easy to grieve alone, but the joy is such that you have to share it,” says dramatist and director Miika Muranen .
The characters dare to laugh at aging, but they also talk openly about fears, illnesses and the limitations of life.
“I think it’s their motto that you should play and love for as long as possible,” Muranen sums up.
Muranen’s previous productions for the Helsinki City Theatre include Lempi (2024) and Mousetrap (2023).
A voice for older women
The play is based on Pirjo Tuominen’s novel of the same name (Tammi, 2024), which, according to the author with a long career, will be her last work.
Muranen became interested in it after seeing a television interview in which Tuominen talked about his book. He tipped off the novel to Sanna Niemeläinen , dramaturg at the Helsinki City Theatre, without thinking at the stage that he could dramatise or direct it himself.
When the City Theatre was later asked if he would like to take on the work, Muranen decided to accept the challenge. “I thought that this could be a warm-hearted comedy with depth, touching and, above all, a good mood,” Muranen says.
After the first dramatisation version was completed, Muranen discussed the play with 86-year-old Pirjo Tuominen over the phone. “He was strict in a good way and asked why a man in his forties wanted to make theatre about the love lives of women in their 70s and 80s. He thought it was a bit suspicious,” Muranen laughs, but he thinks the question was completely justified.
“I was raised by my mother and grandmothers, and I have older women as friends. So the world is familiar in some way, and the desire to find love as a subject is universal,” Muranen explains. In addition, she believed that she would be able to bring perspectives and rhythm to the play that could also speak to younger viewers, even though the focus is on the stories of women in their seventies.
A significant part of the theatre audience is the peers of the characters in the Rose of the Square, but despite this, they are surprisingly rarely seen on stage, especially as the main characters. “I appreciate this group tremendously. They really keep our cultural institutions vibrant,” Muranen says.
Squeaky humour
Muranen describes Tuominen’s novel as a grateful starting point for the play. “There is a lot of ready-made dialogue in the book, which is always an advantage for a dramatist.”
However, difficult and sad things are often told in the book as the thoughts of the characters. “It was both exciting and exciting to rewrite scenes into dialogue to make the characters’ voices stay present,” Muranen says.
The foursome call themselves the Roses – a name that refers to an invasive alien species that is considered harmful. “I love their self-irony here. They feel that society thinks the same way about them, that they are nothing but a nuisance that they should be disposed of,” Muranen says.
The humour of the Roses is born from perceptive dialogue. About what kind of observations women make, for example, about dating culture, gender differences, or how love and sexuality change with age.
“The purpose is by no means to laugh at the elderly and their needs, but together with them. The performance is a glass of champagne for all the gorgeous, older women,” Muranen says.
She describes the Wrinkled Roses as the Singkuelämä for the elderly, where the viewer gets to experience the joy and compassion of the dating culture.
In the performance, lightness and emotion go hand in hand, but Tuominen asked Muranen to keep in mind that people his age have enough sorrow in life.
“She hoped that people would come to the theatre to rejoice and laugh. I thought that was a wonderful thing to say.”
Text Ida Henritius