Review: Punaorvot
Helsinki City Theatre’s Red Orphans is an intense drama whose climax gave a genuine catharsis experience
The fine stage designs of the Helsinki City Theatre’s Red Orphans were dominated by the main colour red. Inside my head, that strong red did not symbolize the revolution or the Finnish Civil War that ended in bloody terror. The colour was a sign of love in the midst of a reality that had turned into a nightmare.
Perhaps the most shocking example of that self-sacrificing love we viewers got to see and experience right at the beginning of the play written by Anneli Kanto and Lauri Maijala .
As a director, Maijala has the ability to make very visual theatre. The ensemble created in Red Orphans from powerful stage images and acting based on a strong presence is ennobled by the rich soundscape created by sound designer Aleksi Saura .
More than a hundred years have now passed since the tragedy of the Finnish Civil War. Its causes and consequences have been suppressed, and stories about the fate of red orphans have also been written before. That’s why I think Maijala’s way of distancing herself from the story of the play with the placement of the characters and the use of space was a solution that worked at least on the inner stage of my head.
Of course, the fourth wall of the stage was also hammered with a very big hammer both at the beginning of the play and immediately after the intermission. However, it is not worth telling, for example, how the reincarnation of Juha Berg, the character of The Diary of a Drunkard directed by Maijala, appeared played by Antti Autio to disrupt the performance accompanied by an accordion.
Maijala still has at least a hint of mischief left, which made the directing of her youth so hilariously funny and hurtful. After all, stepping into the artistic direction of a large institutional theatre is not the gate after which all hope can be thrown away.
Red orphans is, of course, a tragedy. The mother of the story is heartbroken. He is tormented not only by the terrible experiences of the war, but also by overwhelming guilt. The horrors experienced by the mother culminated in the starvation of the youngest child, a baby born just before the outbreak of the rebellion, and the custody of the family’s two daughters.
In the premiere, Ella Mettänen played a shocking role as a mother suffering from post-traumatic syndrome. Maijala and Mettänen have also distanced themselves from the mother’s figure by covering Mettänen’s face with a thick, white theatre mask.
The camouflage designed by Tuula Kuittinen was a justified and effective method. It gave its own tone to the play. The depth of the tragedy of the Civil War, the scale of the tragedy, is not revealed with emotion a hundred years after these events.
The attempt to distance the story was also reflected in Tiina Kaukanen’s insightful costume design. Of the costumes, only Autio, who played the family’s son Aarre, and Riitta Havukainen , who played the maternal grandmother Elli, had a touch of the 1920s era in their costumes. The other roles were played in overalls.
Mettänen’s strong make-up showed, at least to me, how skilfully Maijala and her working groups know how to use visual symbols. The interaction between theatre, performance, circus and street art is certainly fruitful, and I think that in Red Orphans, the process of creating something new through references and quotations was visible in a good way.
For example, the scene where Kari Mattila walked onto the stage on two wooden legs and crutches disguised as Santa Claus was familiar to me from the imagery of the performance.
Linked to the story of the play, this character, which is basically comical in nature, brought completely new, frightening meanings to the play. Pedophilia may not have been a completely unknown phenomenon even in Ostrobothnia among the Körttians and Laestadians in the 1920s. At least the news about the activities of lay preachers of religious sects in today’s Finland does not give reason to assume this.
The image of a torture victim hanging from the ceiling with a sack on her head is iconic.
Wenla Reimaluoto shone in the role of the mistreated Lahja in the foster home. Reimaluoto’s long monologue, performed almost entirely by means of mimicry, about the hard toil that the master of the foster family forced the girl to do was breathtaking to watch. The performance of Reimaluoto, who was obviously in good shape, had the feel of a genuinely big sports festival.
The premiere of Red Orphans was theatre, where the intensity of the performance increased scene by scene, as it should be in a proper drama. The performance finally took off and in a way quite literally in the last scene, where the audience was kind of pardoned from the torment caused by the tragic story.
The final scene that ended this story was simply wonderful.
In addition to the Brechtian theatrical tradition, there is also a concrete reason for the distancing used in the play. The second wave of the coronavirus epidemic, which is currently intensifying, was visible both in the auditorium and on stage.
The security measures did not reduce the effectiveness of the proposal. Quite the opposite, actually. Nor were they scary, but rather moving. In this theatre, both the audience and the staff are taken care of.
Theatre is the art of caring and empathizing.
The collaboration between author Anneli Kanto and Maijala began with KOM Theatre’s Blood Roses, which was based on Kanto’s novel of the same name, published in 2008.