Mental Finland premiere amazes Brussels theatre audience

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By Kirsikka Moring
     
      The premiere audience at the Belgian National Theatre grows tense, as dark humour turns into grotesque tragedy. At the end of the performance, a Santa Claus , resembling [theatre director] Kalle Holmberg has been crucified and stoned.
      Before that, the image of Finland has been opened up with symbols that are quite familiar. However, perhaps the point of view is quite different from that of the designers of the “Finland brand”.
      Mental Finland, a play written and directed by Kristian Smeds and commissioned by the Belgian National Theatre, certainly also includes the sauna, Sibelius, and even sisu to a massive degree. The play is set in 2069 somewhere on the outskirts of Brussels, where strange people live in a forgotten freight container. They are Finns, but their language and habits resemble those of primeval people. They stagger and slur their speech, and take advantage of each other.
     
Compared with this performance, Smeds’s theatre version of The Unknown Soldier at the Finnish National Theatre is quite tame. However, the Belgian audience is accustomed to much more shocking performances than this. Nobody walks out, no tomatoes fly, as they did in the years of provocative theatre. Just one little rape and the odd massacre do not shock people in this part of the world very much.
      There is even a clip of a bad Santa Claus on YouTube.
      The people leaving the theatre seem simply confused. Most feel that Mental Finland is not particularly Finnish. “They tore some rather common European values from the frame here. The problems are the same, and it goes deep. The performance is rough, but touching”, says Nicolas Delamotte-Legrand, who runs an art gallery in Brussels.
     
The actors are praised effusively, and videos on three walls have made a deep impression.
      The European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn is moved, but not shocked by the performance. He feels that Smeds brings out an interesting counterforce to the European image of Finland, according to which Finland is a top country in education, technology, and know-how.
      “Actually, there is no really accurate Finland image here at all, nor does the Finnish brand come from glossy pictures.”
      Mental Finland will be performed in Brussels through February 22nd. The production will have its Finnish premiere at the Finnish National Theatre in the autumn. It is one of the most international of all Finnish theatre productions, with participants from 11 different countries.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish theatre´s turn to conquer Europe (3.3.2007)

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