Review: Bolla

Bolla – an award-winning story makes time fly Helsinki City Theatre The Helsinki City Theatre is an excellent version of the 2019 Finlandia Prize winner, Pajtim Statovci’s Bolla.

Bolla, which explores Europe’s painful recent history, is set between 1995 and 2004. There is turmoil in the former Yugoslavia. Arsim (Samuli Niittymäki) has a clear life, a wife and his studies are well underway, but everything changes when he meets Miloš (Mikko Kauppila). A forbidden relationship is established between the Albanian and the Serb, which burns everything else in its path.

In the outer world, war is approaching and the family is growing, but Arsim and Miloš imagine it all when they are alone, while Arsim reads his writings aloud. After the conflict between the two worlds and the frustration it brings, Arsim vents his poor wife (Jessica Grabowsky), who is trying her best to keep the family together.

Eventually, the Albanian population of the region has to flee abroad and the lovers’ connection is broken. Both lose their direction, but the hope of a meeting is still alive.

In the auditorium, time flies.

On stage, the diversity and multidimensionality of the main characters is well captured – their actions are sometimes understood and sometimes disgusted. Both Arsim and Miloš are both good and bad, contradictory and human, people who take out their pain on others, who drive themselves to destruction.

Samuli Niittymäki (previous works, e.g. Sunday Lunch and Seurapeli) and Mikko Kauppila (e.g. Syke and Aikuiset) are excellent as the main couple. The personality differences are clearly visible: Niittymäki gets to play as an explosive Arsim, and Kauppila’s Miloš is bubbling under the surface when big emotions are released through writing.

The duration of the performance with intermissions is close to three hours, but time flies in the audience. I recommend!

Pajtim Statovci’s novel Bolla (Otava) won the Finlandia Prize in 2019. Tuomas Timonen has adapted the novel into a play, directed by Milja Sarkola.