Review: Kaksi maailmaa
The curse of the community
“Two Worlds” is about liberation from a narrow faith community.
A strict religious community can be both a blessing and a curse. A sense of community is a resource, but on the flip side of it is the deprivation of freedom and forced adaptation. This is what the play Two Worlds by Danish Niels Arden Oplev and Steen Bille is about.
Milko Lehto’s direction on the Small Stage of the Helsinki City Theatre is undoubtedly one of the most interesting plays about religion this autumn.
The play depicts Jehovah’s Witnesses, but essentially the same phenomena can also be found in other introverted communities with a strong identity. Breaking away from the community to which family and friends belong is difficult and painful. The community may also actively reject the “apostate.”
At first, Two Worlds is bound to remind me of Dome Karukoski’s film Forbidden Fruit (2009), which tells the story of two girls who break away from the Conservative Laestadian movement. In Two Worlds, too, two girls on the verge of adulthood search for the limits of freedom by partying.
The same dynamic operates in Forbidden Fruit and Two Worlds: the girl who is the most rebellious returns to the line, and the girl who, persuaded and reluctantly by a friend, sets out to break boundaries, gets into a growth process that leads to independence.
The community of Jehovah’s Witnesses is not demonized, but its deep grip on people is made clear, including the ban on blood transfusions.
The members of the community wear beige and gray clothes. Outsiders wear bright clothes.
In Two Worlds , the main character is Sara Laakso (the excellent Rosanna Kemppi), who falls in love with Tuukka (Jarkko Miettinen), a boy without faith.
The fates of Sara’s family also come to light. The brother has turned into a persona non grata because he embraces the community’s values. Sara’s father and mother get a divorce, but the father is forgiven by the community for his escape. Children are forced to avoid their family members.
The play begins with the baptism of Sara’s sister. The viewer is drawn into the ritual of a mysterious religious community.
The two worlds claim that breaking away from a strict religious community is an individual tragedy, an oppressive and cruel path. The claim is familiar from stories that have come to light through the Association of Victims of Religion, among other things.
Usually, families and communities raise a person to survive in the world, but a strict faith community tries to counteract the influence of the outside world.
Two Worlds is a clear theatre, the events are presented chronologically. There are also interesting theatrical narrative methods, such as creating the passage of time by moving tables on a revolving stage.