Kristian Smeds in Search of “Finnishness”: Sauna, Hare Ears and Some Knockabout Comedy
Aleksandra Dunaeva*
Arto Paasilinna: Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare). Adapted and directed by Kristian Smeds for the Finnish National Theatre. Set design by Kati Lukka. Costume design by Auli Turtiainen. Lighting and video design by Ville Seppänen. Sound design by Hanna Rajakangas. Make-up design by Minttu Minkkinen. Assistant director Marta Aliide Jakovski. Cast: Tommi Korpela as Vatanen, Marja Salo as The Hare. All other roles: Sari Puumalainen, Heikki Pitkänen, Juha Varis. Premiere in October 2024.
The play Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare) is based on Arto Paasilinna’s novel (1975), a great favorite of Finns. Translated into thirty languages and twice filmed, the book tells the story of a middle-aged man, a certain Vatanen, who is fatally tired of his own life. Having accidentally hit a hare on the road, he leaves his wife, his job and his hated life in the city and goes into the forest to wander and take care of the wounded animal. In Vatanen’s travels with the hare through the Finnish countryside, the realities of the era of Finlandisation (the Finnish version of the stagnant time when President Urho K. Kekkonen ruled the country from 1956 to 1981) are intertwined with grotesque and fantastic situations. The film version by Risto Jarva (1977) immediately became a cult favourite. The play by Kristian Smeds also has a chance of sticking in the popular memory.

Smeds has a special relationship with Paasilinna’s text. The director, who does not usually repeat himself, has staged this material twice—the first production was in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2005. In the Finnish National Theatre’s fresh interpretation, Vatanen’s escape for freedom turns into a truly Finnish Odyssey—the hero’s search for himself, national identity and the meaning of life. Wandering through the forests and tundras of his native country, Vatanen, played by Tommi Korpela, immerses himself in the landscapes of world culture. At times, his lanky figure seems to have the features of Peer Gynt or Don Quixote—other great dreamers and wanderers. Yet, Vatanen, accompanied by The Hare, becomes a unique Finnish phenomenon.
The exploration of “Finnishness” has occupied Smeds for many years. This time, the director seems to be getting closer to creating a genuinely folk pair of characters. Vatanen’s grounded, unhurried giant is in stark contrast with Marja Salo’s Hare. Her/its fun is serious and unrestrained—like a compressed spring, it is ready to perk up its ears and run away, or jab the interlocutor with a sharp joke. It swears foully, jokes hilariously and actively interacts with the audience, even climbing the mezzanine railing. It simultaneously combines childlike directness and tenderness, defencelessness and irrepressible energy. The Hare’s thinking is very concrete: “There are no bears in the sky, Vatanen,” The Hare protests when Vatanen points to the constellations, “Bears live on the ground, in forests. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” In this piece of nature on stage, it is as if the philosophical category of Dasein, “present existence,” is embodied.
The Hare and Vatanen do not immediately get along with each other but gradually develop an exceptional relationship—probably a new form of responsibility, a kinship between nature (the world? existence?) and humanity.

At the same time, The Hare embodies the theatre universe in flesh and blood. “It’s funny that there is not just one common world that we all belong to, but that there are many and varied worlds,” The Hare philosophically remarks, “As it is now: you in the audience have your world, and I here on stage, with my friend Carrot, have mine.” The audience, which had just laughed at The Hare’s jokes, falls silent. Smeds knows his audience well. His best performances are always a play between illusion and reality, the luxury of baroque theatre’s generosity. In the first act, he mobilizes the entire theatre as if it were a sparkling joy machine.

The wooden panels brightened by naive images of animals, with which the stage portal is stitched (set design by Kati Lukka), unmistakably refer to the Finnish tradition of summer theatre—cheerful outdoor performances. The world of the Finnish looking-glass unfolding on the wooden scaffolding of this “naive” theatre is cute and phantasmagoric, infantile and absurd, wise and ridiculous. There is room for an imaginary lake, the obligatory sofa with plaids, a giant carrot and even a Finnish sauna with blazing stones. Sari Puumalainen, Heikki Pitkänen and Juha Varis create a whole gallery of colorful characters. A veterinarian with blood on his hands, who treats his patients with laughter therapy; a sexy barmaid; Vatanen’s imaginary friends—Strawberry, Swallow and Woodpecker—and a screaming kindergarten teacher (screaming from someone’s traumatic experience), as well as policemen (favorite characters of summer theatre), who perform pop hits extravagantly, and many others. The actors in this performance display all the versatility of their talents. This ensemble precision and intensity of acting is new to me in Smeds’ theatre. The actors themselves seem reluctant to part from their brilliant sketches—the first act of the play stretches for almost two hours. It seems that the height of absurdity has long since been reached, but it’s only when Kekkonen’s giant iron head rolls out from the depths of the stage that this grueling journey climaxes.

Unlike his film prototype, Korpela’s Vatanen is fleeing to the far North, to remote Lapland, not from evil men with guns or stupid tourists. He is trying to hide from the ubiquitous Kekkonen in the heads of his fellow citizens.
By sending his characters to the North, Smeds places them in a completely different theatrical aesthetic in the second act, from folk comedy’s warmth and wooden coziness into the emptiness of symbolic space. A rotating circle of smoke projected on to a vast screen forms a video picture of a snow-covered wilderness. Varis, Salo and Pitkänen now play not just characters but abstract images. The horror-stricken face of Salo is no longer The Hare but nature itself, looking at the man who is ready to destroy it in his passionate and incorporeal religious quest. Juha Varis’s acting is a masterpiece—it is worth coming to this performance just to see how his character, an allegory of consumption, with the desperation and madness of the last man on the Earth, indiscriminately devours everything he finds in this desert, including dishwashing liquid. This kind of theatre was once called symbolist theatre, but its roots go even deeper, back to the medieval miracle plays performed in churches or in the parsonage.
What can we set against this gloomy feast of self-destruction? Ourselves, our living feelings?—the theatre asks. Korpela and Puumalainen (as Vatanen’s estranged wife) give a masterclass in close-up cinema, playing out their characters’ breaking of illusions. We see their faces on a big screen. Stealthily, almost imperceptibly, Smeds illuminates the dome of the theatre (lighting and video design by Ville Seppänen) during these monologues. Surprisingly, with the sky, clouds and human figures painted, the dome resembles a church. The soft light descends on the tormented characters like grace. It would be wonderfully didactic if it weren’t so theatrical.

In Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, the button-maker is convinced that Peer’s soul must be stripped down, along with all the rest of his dirty possessions, until he can explain where and when in his life he was himself. Maybe such a moment (at least a moment) is possible in the theatre?
Vatanen asks The Hare to give him the hare’s ears. Capturing the recoiling figures of passers-by, the camera follows this new Vatanen (or The new Hare?), a real/fantasy creature, as he leaves the theatre through the front door for the dark square. In 2005, The Hare took his double-barreled shotgun with him, but this one, twenty years older, goes out into the world defenseless. I wonder what the director wants to say by this?
P.S.: Leaving the theatre by the same route as Vatanen, I automatically touched my head to see if the fluffy hare’s ears had grown on top of it.

*Aleksandra Dunaeva, theatre maker, researcher and critic with migration experience. PhD in Theatre Studies. Winner of the TINFO Prize 2022 within the Talo horjahti project team. Her interests include social theatre (SEA), disability performance studies, performance and migration studies, art pedagogy. Based in Helsinki, Finland.
Copyright © 2024 Aleksandra Dunaeva
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
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