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You are here: Home Leisure Arts & Culture Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the sauna

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12/02/2009Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the sauna

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the sauna Editor Paul Morris attended the première of Mental Finland, a new work from Kristian Smeds in collaboration with the KVS.

There’s a famous UK advert whose punch line is “It does exactly what it says on the tin”.  Kristian Smeds’ company have done almost that in entitling their new production Mental Finland. It would probably be against the Trades Descriptions Act not to add the word Completely to the front of the title.

If you have been tempted out again to the theatre recently because Mamma Mia! hit the stages, then this is not for you. The Finnish pop and raucous sounds that punctuate MF will not end up playing in every supermarket (ALL DAY LONG!) as ABBA tracks now do.

Finnish director Smeds has filled this particular tin-can with love, lust, violence, cowboys and Indians, paedophilia, modern dance and digital dreamscapes - the whole laced with black comedy which reaches its apotheosis (without spoiling an ending which I am sure was responsible for a sleepless night) in the dramatic demise of one Santa Claus, no less.

photo KVS, Mental Finland

It is billed as ‘a dark comedy set in Europe in 2069’. If I hadn’t read the blurb supplied I would not have realised that the ‘troops’ at the start were EU forces and that little Finland was the last bastion of freedom. It matters not since this production is specific and yet somehow universal, displaying all the qualities, both grim and bright, of a modern fairytale.

A rundown trailer graces the back wall and becomes, at turns, a sauna, a home to a very odd family unit and even a musical stage. Video (mostly live) is used extensively as – curtains drawn - the stage’s back wall projects what’s happening within the trailer set, an effect which at times becomes unsettlingly voyeuristic. This is very useful but somewhat overplayed - at one stage I felt like standing up and demanding popcorn and a large diet Coke. Judicious editing of these filmic sequences would also cut the running time (a massive two and half hours – without an interval). Despite its length the excellent cast managed to keep up the pace, transforming in deft switches from one character to another as the ‘episodes’ piled up.

There is some PG violence in the dance sequences but stage death is ever-present as machine guns stutter and ‘dancers’ are mowed down by ‘actors’. The real violence is meted out on the director's home country, as text and images combine to offer a fairly grim overall representation of Finnish life – or does this represent all existence on Earth? One scene has put me off bananas for life.

photo KVS, Mental Finland

There are some delightful touches as the production makes full use of its impressive three-wall projection, particularly in the water scene as sky-blue clad dancers drift across the deep, aquatic reflections. Smeds himself believes, “Art is like an enormous sea. This sea can exist with me but also without me.”

I sat beside Anja Dirks, festival director of the German international festival THEATREFORMEN. She informed me that this was a big night for international theatre, her head turning back to look up to the darkened gods: “All the festival directors are here tonight. This is a big deal.”

Mental Finland is darkly comic throughout but welcome relief does come occasionally, sometimes in subtle form in dance moments but mainly in the outlandish shape of a band of desperadoes, dressed to hilarious effect somewhere between Mad Max and a primary school production of the Wizard of Oz (odd?). They are attempting to capture and execute Indians but mainly strut their stuff and talk nonsense. Their head honcho finally admits to the audience (having just lost one of his black-tape eyebrows) that they are not real cowboys but actors who thought their performances might lead to Shakespeare gigs.

In looking back at his theatrical origins, Smeds does pay fitting tribute to his drama professors: “But I believe my teachers, my best teachers, are all dead: Dostoyevsky for example.” The existential is alive and well in Smedts work, the human being rightly taking centre stage in an absurd world mined with all manner of perils and horrors.

photo KVS, Mental Finland


The neatest trick of the night is served up by a toy remote control but, again, I won’t spoil that moment for you except to say: Keep your head down!

In fact that’s not a bad piece of advice all round when attending Mental Finland. Hyvästi!

Paul Morris

In Finnish and Estonian, and occasional English, subtitled in Dutch, French and English

13 -21 February 2009

www.kvs.be

 

Paul Morris/Expatica 2009


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