We file into Stoa theatre in Itäkeskus, a healthy turn out fills the seating from centre out, late comers orbiting around us. From behind the curtain a figure appears with a disco-ball head promenading into a spotlight, his mirrors cast scattered light all around. It’s slow, simple and beautiful. Patting the pockets of their overalls, the figure pulls out a cigarette astonishingly attaching it to where a mouth might be. Immediately I’m reassured that the next 65 minutes will be of the highest quality.

Häppy Hour produced by The Nordic Council (Merri Heikkilä [FIN], Jakob Jacobsson [SWE], Bjarni Árnason [ISL]), is a humoresque examination of the relationship of happiness and alcohol in the Nordics. A central theme is the persistence of Finland’s ranking as “the happiest country on the planet” despite high suicide, depression and loneliness rate. I’ve never quite understood myself through what metric happiness is measured, although often I’ve heard Finns interpret “happiness” as “satisfaction” (tyytyväisyys). Through a series of scenes, we see this contradiction abound — the trio show both the desperation, delusion and dependency of alcohol next to the seduction, surrender and satisfaction of it. 

Encapsulating this dichotomy is this Swedish concept of “afterwork” where Jakob Jacobsson explains you go to drink in a bar by yourself, surrounded by other people going through the same solitary ritual. Thus the trio gathers round a table with a single bottle which is passed around thirstily with increasing aggravation. In a routine that combined sleight of hand and seated acrobatics the table is populated by cans and bottles and finally shot glasses seemingly out of thin air. It’s a slick, perfectly timed routine — a masterclass in both physical theatre and object manipulation and it’s a joy to behold. 

In a sequence that caught me off guard with its tenderness, Merri Heikkilä balances the (now) empty liquor bottle on his head. His eyes cross staring intently on the bottle and his mouth which purses into an increasingly acute “∧” makes for a sequence which shows the delicate balance the nordic man: always attempting to be “one drink before, a few too many”. The intense fixation and strange accommodative contortions Heikkilä’s body goes through to maintain this knife-edge elegantly show the way in which alcohol “puppeteers” one’s life.

For me the central character of the play was Bjarni Árnason, whose look fits the archetype of the “Nordic man” best of the trio. In the first half, he keeps very much to the wings, hoisting Jacobsson during an aerial routine, or diverting a bit of attention by cracking open of a couple Coronas with an audience member. However, with time Árnason very much takes centre stage in a series of episodes that seems to ramp up unexpectedness in equal measure with virtuosic skill; a juggling sequence on roller-skates astounds the public to a banal backing track of ABBA tunes, and finally the return of the Discoball-headed figure (revealed to be Árnason all along), who is hoisted up in the air spinning multiple diablos on an extraordinarily long string to a live karaoke-version of Bowie’s Space Oddity provided by Heikkilä and Jakobsson. 

As the curtain draws, the audience erupts in applause and trio take their bows leaving Árnason dangling helplessly as we exit, positively elated by the experience.

The latest and greatest production of Based on Kimberly (Imogen Huzel [GRB], Inka Pehkonen [FIN])¹ begins in the mouth. Through the acrid peppery punch of a ginger shot, which is given to every one of us attending Caisa on this afternoon, sensations are primed, eyebrows raised and pupils dilated. A phunk of mud is present in the hall, in which a veritable potato field has been installed centre stage. 

A pupley-pink light masks a cellophane banner on which one can just about make out: “Fake Fucking Farmers”. Up until this point I haven’t even noticed the two figures perched on balance stands madly scanning the audience. Their style, (a combination of tweed-like patterns and see-through polyurethane trousers, stilettos and handbags) makes poly-tunnels of their limbs. 

Huzel and Pehkonen maintain their uncompromising commitment of pushing circus performance deep into the margins of performance art: following no traditional narrative structures or demonstrations of tricks — punk-like play that barely pauses for a moment feels like a spontaneous creation. An energy of improvisation is maintained through a feeling of the show seemingly forming and falling apart all at the same time; particularly Huzel’s interactions and self aware grimaces keep us all guessing as to what is planned and not. So much so that gags are almost accidentally stumbled into with an un-performative sincerity.

Of course, the magic of such performance is the associations one builds up in real time — recurring elements like Perhkonen’s rag doll falls seem to leave her face down in the mud with an odd consistency — Is it about death? Reducing the body into an object? Eventually, a thin trace of dirt sticks to Pehkonen’s face forming both moustache and unibrow  — I wonder if this gender bending result is serendipitous too?

A recurring motif inspires audible wincing from the crowd: just as we drank a ginger shot before the show, so do the duo, although with a twist. After an initial drink, Huzel performs a handstand gently opening her mouth after a full-extension, Pehkonen then proceeds to drink, by use of a straw, directly from Huzels mouth. The groans from the audience only crescendo throughout repetitions of this action as the juice is transmitted from one body to another, and back, and back again with a playful depravity.

It’s rare to incite such strong feelings from an audience, I would describe such a performance beyond even physical theatre — the duo use every theatrical tool with extraordinary poise, lighting, music, sound, bodily contortion, speech, song, scenography, props, improvisation, humour and tragedy. It’s clear that the show is not as loose as it might first appear, its fast tempo and recurring images lingering in my psyche for weeks after the performance, in every knobbled ginger root I see horns, in every pile of potatoes, a crown.

I cannot with clarity sum up Memoirs of Mud in a paragraph let alone a sentence. Certainly it’s more enigmatic than any theatre, let alone a circus that I have ever seen. Of one thing I am sure, Based on Kimberly are the Sex Pistols of circus.

The third and final performance I saw at the festival was Tuomas Vuorinen’s Maanos — a minimalist techno fever dream meditating on the real, the digital and the remembered. A forest of spiny PVC tube trees line two sides of the stage which is itself blanketed in white plastic. Vuorinen is ambling around making small adjustments to the folds of plastic sheeting the floor, and fixing additional PVC “branches” to the “trees”. The set has a distinctly minimalist vibe, with a particular Nordic flat-pack flavour to it. 

We begin with a short epigraph, which speaks to an archetype of modern Finnish life:

 

As a child I remember playing in the forests endlessly, then as I grew up i got interested in computers and we moved into the city. Now i return to the forest but only as a guest. (paraphrased)

 

A wonderful sequence utilising two sample pads — one up a tree and one on the floor — begins. In the tree, a digitised bird song is heard and seen through a charming animation of the pads’ buttons; across the stage on the floor, Vuorinen brushes the buttons and as if they were water, ripples produce a digitised simulacrum of a stream. 

The rest of the performance has a decidedly more dancey and nostalgic quality to it; up-tempo syncopations and high contrast lighting changes are channeling early Ryoji Ikeda with potency. We drift from scene to scene, each playing with this combination of live performer and computer generated graphics. The aesthetic reminds me of early 2000’s music videos and Nordic “Vaporware” music videos of Yung Lean. Thus an inevitable feeling of nostalgia is evoked. 

The word “maanos” describes the segregated layers of soil that make up the tundra, its top layer is fresh leaf litter, low bushes, animal waste and so on. As one progresses through the layers, i.e. deeper into the ground, distinct stages of decomposition are present all at once until we reach the “permafrost” — the permanently frozen ground. Vuorinen’s structure in part follows this conceit, each scene burrowing deeper into his subconscious, memory and imagination. Concluding is an extended sequence of “avanto” where a live video feedback distorts spinning limbs into spiralling mandalas. Is it a cleanse? A death? Perhaps a re-birth?

The whole performance evokes to me a moment of solitude of the contemporary Finnish forest-raver, transitioning from the repetitive structures of EDM to natural structures that are revealed perhaps through psychedelic substance. For me it suggests an epiphany that finds solace with the fact that even our most digital manifestations are a part of a larger natural scheme.

 

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1. A duo that we have featured before in a previous review: Why be a yes person (?)(!) ↩︎