John Irving impressed by Finnish stage version of Hotel New Hampshire
Kom-Theatre performance and audience who laughed in right places made US author angry - 30 years too late
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By Suna Vuori
He arrives when the rest of the audience is already seated, walking in without ceremony, and without drawing attention to himself.
Heads nevertheless turn. The feeling in the audience of the Kom-Theatre is strangely silent, and waiting. Everyone seems to be conscious that an author is sitting in the seventh row - and it’s not just any author - it is a world-class star, John Irving from the United States.
The Hotel New Hampshire is based on Irving’s novel of the same name, which appeared in 1981, and which was translated into Finnish soon after that. Kom has been performing a dramatisation of the novel since early November to a total of 20,000 spectators. The performance that is beginning is the 67th, and the last one.
Irving, 68, calls the theatre his first love. His mother was a prompter at a small theatre in Exeter, and John, who liked to spend time in the theatre, would often watch rehearsals. On the first night he already knew how the play would end.
The writer believes that this is the reason why he always likes to come up with an ending for his new books first.
The lights go out. A bear appears on the stage. It is a familiar totem animal from Irving’s books. Then, the narrator - John from the Berry Family (actor Niko Saarela), the father Win ( Pekka Valkeejärvi, who bears a striking resemblance to John Irving himself, down to the vertical wrinkles on his forehead).
Seven benches away to my right, the jaws of the tanned American with thick grey hair, chew gum and open, according to the testimony of translator Kristiina Rikman - at just the right parts.
This is the first stage adaption of The Hotel New Hampshire that the writer has ever seen.
It has been adapted to the stage also in Germany, and in France, but Irving has not seen either one. “The dramatisation that I read was very good, but not as successful as this one”, he said of the German version.
Now he is at the Kom-Theatre in Helsinki, partly because he began his marketing tour of his novel Last Night in Twisted River in Finland.
“The performance was wonderful”, Irving said, politely over a mug of beer at the restaurant of the theatre. “But the completely correct reactions that it raised among the audience brought to my mind the negative reaction that the book initially got in the United States.”
The Hotel New Hampshire followed Irving’s breakthrough novel, the immensely popular World According to Garp, and the reception was largely one of disappointment.
“I had to read truly stupid, narrow-minded, and mean-spirited reviews”, Irving says. “Imagine, the book was criticised for violence, and for taking terrorists seriously! No asshole would say that now!”
The excited author wants to change tables so as not to be separated from his family members.
Travelling with John Irving are his wife Janet , his son Everett, his son’s girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s mother.
We seek out a small, but rapidly filling restaurant, and go to the most remote corner, where the author talks, staring at the table.
“ The Hotel New Hampshire clearly has a looser plot structure than most of my other books do”, Irving says, starting from the beginning. “Franny needs to have sexual violence take place, and the rape support centre were the core of the book from the first lines. So was the theme of blindness.”
“It’s a story. It takes a comic view of matters that people take seriously, and at the same time, it takes a serious point of view of matters that people are in the habit of making fun of. This came out well in the performance.”
John Irving is both charmed by the Kom-Theatre performance - and at the same time, he feels hurt in retrospect.
“The audience laughed at just the right places, and was shocked in the right places. It seems almost more difficult to approve of it now, 30 years after the book appeared, here in a completely different culture, and in a theatre. This well-produced comedy made me angry at the reception in my own country, in its own time!”
Irving says that he is sure that the rape of Franny, which was central to the story, still could not be performed on Broadway.
“Things are so different in Europe. My books are understood and appreciated here more than they are in my own country.”
Tony Richardson directed the film version of The Hotel New Hampshire in 1984. The script, which was to have been for two different films, ultimately had to be condensed into one, but Irving was relatively pleased with the compromise.
“However, the premiere in New York was unforgettable. About a third of the well-dressed members of the audience walked out in moral outrage at the point when Win killed an Austrian terrorist with a baseball bat.”
Nevertheless, I like this adaption more than the movie. I hope that it would soon be produced in English - possibly even in the United States.”
The interview is interrupted by two roaring bears who had escaped from the stage.
“Hey, this is fun!” John Irving says.
Soon the Kom-Theatre choir fetes the amazed author with a song by Finnish-American recording artist Hiski Salomaa.
It is drizzling outside as the cool May evening turns into the night.
Irving sits in the restaurant on Kapteeninkatu, talking to the group behind the theatre production late into the night - even though ne needs to get up at five in the morning.
Soon he is in Oslo, and before him is the rest of his dear Europe.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.5.2010
SUNA VUORI / Helsingin Sanomat
suna.vuori@hs.fi
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| 1.6.2010 - THIS WEEK |
 John Irving impressed by Finnish stage version of Hotel New Hampshire |
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