Review: Juoksuhaudantie

Relaxed atmosphere on Juoksuhaudantie

A couple of red noses, a little black and white paint on the face and a good dose of humor… With those tools, a compatible entertainment package is created from the more than 300-page Finlandia Prize-winning novel.

The Trench Road by RedNoseClub clowns Timo Ruuskanen and Tuukka Vasama seems like an impossible project – until you see it.

For those who have read Kari Hotakainen’s novel and seen the film made of it, the story unfolds effortlessly, but Otso Kautto’s clever direction also sucks in the viewer who is unaware of the book.

Ruuskanen’s and Vasama’s clowning is relaxed and effortless. They play all the characters in the novel and do it so nicely that it is easy for the viewer to sit in the cart. Either of the friends can be the protagonist Matti Virtanen, who carries the world’s worries on his shoulders, but the audience knows which one is aiming for a house of front-line soldiers at any given time.

Of the delicacies of the play, the massage scene stands out above the rest. Virtanen gets a “feel for the meat at the bodybuilders’ gym” and starts acquiring tax-free euros for the sale of a house. The long, arduous and almost acrobatic groans of the clowns require fitness, but the unbridled glitter of the stands gives a strange kick.

Hotakainen’s quiet humour is suitable for a face painted melancholy. The novel The Trench Road leaves Matti Virtanen’s final disposal to the reader’s imagination. The clowns are more merciful on stage than in the film directed by Veikko Aaltonen.

However, Virtanen does not go unpunished for his obsessive stunts. Ruuskanen and Vasama leave Johnny Cash’s I Walk The Line – a well-known castle guy, this is just a hint – for the last of their stylishly performed songs.