Review: Missä kuljimme kerran

With reverence, enthusiasm
Westö at the Helsinki City Theatre

As a humble person in front of quality literature, even though I trust the theatre and think of the actors with a love of a clerk, I have to admit that I had butterflies in my stomach when the curtain rose. The characters created by Kjell Westö would now be physically present.

Whether they were or not – one to one with the reading experience – it doesn’t matter in the end. Kari Heiskanen has created a stage work that works completely in its own right. It is welcome just as it is. As a fragmentary play about big things, the stages of a nation, individual reactions, rise and fall. About us and our roots, which stand out from the black soil either as pale blonde or blood-colored…

A Helsinki that many people don’t know will take to the big stage. Not only because the period described is far behind, but because it is so different from any other city in Finland. As Professor Laura Kolbe says in an ambitiously crafted programme: “For a long time, Helsinki was Finland’s largest and most significant school city and the home of the country’s only state university, technical and commercial education. Young students from the provinces flocked to the capital. The lively bilingual student and student life characterised life in Helsinki. – – – Modern music came to Finland through the capital, and films established themselves as the number one hobby of young people in Helsinki. Helsinki was the only city in Finland where youth culture, idleness and bohemianism flourished.”

The latter statement is breathed into on stage, with excellent music choices, live performances and house-sized projections. The people in the story emerge from this or a very distant soil, because the social reality was not the same for everyone. And suddenly, the players who had received the handicap cards and other players who were already luckier at birth were pitted against each other.

The events of 1918 are naturally central to the performance, as they are in the underlying work and as they are experienced in Finnish history.

Eccu Widing is initially a sincere young man who grows up to realise – at his father’s school or in spite of it – his own ideas as a photographer and his own creativity as a photographic artist. But the historical tidal wave takes him along to deeds that he does not believe can be justified. Eero Aho genuinely empathizes with his role. Boyishness, sensitivity, poetry, all of them are realized, but they have to give way in the search for forgetfulness to traumatic experiences, the excesses of the civil war. The burden accumulated on the conscience is not lightened by intoxicants. Aho’s expression is unpretentious, as is Seppo Maijala as Jali Widing, Eccu’s father. Maijala makes a portrait of a man who is left alone on the other side of the generation gap, rumoring when a common denominator can no longer be found.

Pekka Valkeejärvi’s Ivar Grandell is quite an interesting character in his serenity and insidious wisdom. Balancing in a politically divided community and understanding the essence of love are given a beautiful interpretation in Valkeejärvi’s role, which is supported by Leena Rapola’s role as actress Henriette.

Pekka Huotari charges Cedi Lilliehjelm with quite a bit of arrogance and cruelty, but Petja Lähde’s “executioner-style” is even harsher.

As a captivating child of nature Allu Kajander is played by Niko Saarela. Straight into the viewer’s hearts, he plays himself, this Saarela. The sailor, talented footballer Allu from the Red camp is like Eccu’s counterpart in this story. Both deserve the viewer’s empathy.

The bohemian women in the play are absolute eye candy. On the other hand, the speech side sometimes slips into the artificial category of old Finnish films or American role models…. In the setting of contrasts, Ursula Salo’s Mandi is from another country in her replication, and Kirsi Karlenius’ saleswoman role, although small, is all the more deliciously drawn.

Musicians Lasse Hirvi and Larry Price conjure up the famous dot on the ice.
Ultimately, this proposal leaves an honest desire to understand difficult events that have weighed on people’s minds for decades. That is why a person sitting in a theatre hall can, in spite of everything, feel the warmth of the cobblestones on the familiar streets of their hometown. Whether your own city is present or far away. Whether it’s called Helsinki, Lohja, Kotka or whatever.