Review: Suomen hauskin mies

Laugh or die! Finland’s funniest man, set in a prison camp during the Civil War, shows the power of theatre

“Laugh or die!” This is how the order that the red theatre director Toivo Parikka receives from the commandant of the prison camp could be summed up. Parikka has ended up in the notorious Iso-Mjölö prison camp on an island on the southern edge of Helsinki. Among the hundreds of prisoners is also a theatre troupe. The year is 1918 and the Civil War has ended.

Weakened by hunger and misery, the party is tasked with preparing a fun play for distinguished guests. If the performance doesn’t make the guests laugh, every actor’s days come to an end. If you feel like it, fate may turn favorable.

At the beginning of November, the Helsinki City Theatre premiered the “hanging drama” The Funniest Man in Finland, written by Mikko Reitala and Heikki Kujanpää. Kujanpää has also directed the play. One of the greatest forces of the performance is its human warmth. The viewer is really interested in the fate of the characters. The strict divisions between friends and foes are actually revealed to be artificial from the very first minutes.

The main role of Finland’s funniest man, Toivo Parikka, is played by Martti Suosalo, who is known to be an excellent comedy actor. The quips written in Parikka’s mouth suit the poker-faced Suosalo perfectly.

The commandant of the prison camp, Hjalmar Kalm (Rauno Ahonen), is grieving for his son, who died in battle against the Reds, and perhaps that is why he is able to act in his task with a stone face. Jaeger Lieutenant Alfred Nyborg, on the other hand, is torn apart by deep conflicts. You should obey orders, but how do you order soldiers to shoot people who are more friends than enemies? Heikki Ranta, who does a nuanced and touching role, manages to communicate Nyborg’s emotional states to the audience strongly with his gaze alone.

The performance begins and ends with very strong images. In the beginning, I even got cold shivers from the music and what I saw. Of course, sounds and music play an important role in the work in other ways as well. The six-piece live orchestra transforms commendably from prisoners to guards, German soldiers and back to musicians. The song numbers have been used sparingly but effectively.

The play progresses quickly from one scene to the next, which also places special demands on the set design. The set design designed by Pekka Korpiniity delights with its ingenuity. The rotating structure smoothly transforms into a ship or a stage. With small changes, you can bring completely different moods to the space. The back edge of the stage is bordered by barbed wire fences, which are a constant reminder of the venue.

Sari Salmela’s costumes are not only respectful of the era but also inventive. The costume team has been able to loosen up, especially in the costumes of the prisoners’ theatre group. Of course, we’ve seen men in dresses before. For example, Pekka Huotari’s cheerfully over-the-top costume with chest-like protrusions and straw muzzles tickles the laughing nerves sweetly. Huotari plays an exhilarating and sympathetic role as the actor Hannula, who languishes with the others at the camp.

The fun play of the prison camp theatre troupe is hilarious in general, but it is also easy to find deeper levels in it. The play immediately reminded me of court jesters, who once entertained the aristocracy and, under the guise of humour, were also allowed to criticise and even mock rulers and nobility. Prisoners exercise this right despite the risks, and jesters are also referred to directly by dressing the play’s ruler in a jester’s costume.

The funniest man in Finland is also a declaration for the social significance of theatre. Both the performance itself and its play within a play remind us of the role of art as a stimulator of discussion, as a perceptive depiction of reality and, on the other hand, as a bringer of various sensations. The funniest man in Finland skilfully manages to combine extremely dark elements and warm humour. Even though there is black under the surface, the way it is handled lightens the subject so that it does not start to make you anxious. I left the stands impressed by what I experienced. The play is not only thought-provoking, but also very entertaining, which is of course really contradictory considering the subject!

The programme reveals that humour has been an important aid to survival in the desolate conditions of the prison camp in real life. However, the performance is not directly based on real events and people, but is rather a combination of different people and stories strongly spiced with fiction.

Iso-Mjölö, on the other hand, is now known as Isosaari. The island was in military use for more than a hundred years and was opened to the public in the summer of this year. I went to explore the island on a sunny evening and fell in love with it. For those interested in history, the peace of nature and the open seascapes, Isosaari is a top ten destination about an hour’s boat ride from the Market Square. A blog post about the place is already waiting in the sketches of the Culture Cure. I thought I’d publish the text and pictures in the spring, when I can get to the island again. It is still confusing to think what happened on the now idyllic island in 1918. About 300 prisoners died in the camp, and the rest also suffered from hunger, cold and epidemics, among other things.

It was with Isosaari that I became interested in the Finnish Civil War in a new way. There will be a lot of theatre performances and other works about the Civil War in the near future, and I will make a summary of them here on the blog. A film of the same name is also being made about Finland’s funniest man, which is partly created by the same creators as in the play. Earlier this autumn, Kulttuurikuuri published a review of Teatteri Open Door’s play Erottaja 1917–1918, which tells a touching story about a young maid based on real events.