Review: Aurinko ja minä

The sun is still rising today

What does a person do and feel when death is approaching and the memories of past years fade beyond the reach of the mind?


Sarah Bernhardt, created by Kyllikki Forssell, in the play The Sun and I, is a harrowingly strong and sensitive person, a capricious and bossy woman terrified by death and slicing with whip sharpness. He hasn’t cared about conventionality before, why not even now in his old age?

The lovers and the roles are already fluttering memories, newspaper clippings or secretary Pito’s (Santeri Kinnunen) loose notes in an archive folder that is falling apart. My back and hip hurt. The step has become stiff. The roots of the dyed hair are frayed grey. The language of Forssell’s body does not falter for a moment. Every knee in the stands recognizes: just like that. That’s what it’s like to be in the prison of the body.


Written by John Murrell and directed by Milko Lehto, this concise play deals with essential questions: does she live like Sarah, without sparing herself and passionately, or like Pitou, in the shadow of another, with conventional caution and decency? How to deal with grief about the few days?

Kinnunen does a great job for Pito. The secretary has arrogance, disapproval, boredom, patience and, finally, a detachment who throws himself into the suction of a nocturnal play. And what about those gestures, hand waves, slumped shoulders and head shakes. Her madame is utterly impossible, but still, how she has lived!

Forssell’s Sarah is drawn with amazing skill and with such intensity that a lump rises in your throat. There is really very little sublime and comforting about death and human frailty. Death is the enemy.

In their roles, Forssell and Kinnunen are like a couple tired of each other, whose day is filled with mutual quarrels and whims. Beneath the surface, there is genuine caring and concern under the surface, and Sarah has no one else to fight the fear of the approaching unknown. When Sarah is left alone, she knows exactly what is going on, and Pitou still needs a little buzz.

“I want this to make some sense. I’ll surprise everyone,” hopes a sleepless Sarah as she flips through the documentaries of her life.

There are the waste and treasures of life that memory can no longer grasp. Only occasionally does the mind reckon with roles and scenes from one’s own life. At the same time, Sarah knows that there is no more time. He will soon die, even though the sun is still rising.

“Aren’t you at least a little afraid,” the actor asks the audience.

Yes, because death always comes in the middle of life.