Rhythms in the play

By Kumiko Takahashi

I went to see the play Herra Puntila and His Man Matti on a Saturday night at Finlandia's Finnish American Heritage Center. Before I went there, I had no idea about the play; I didn’t know where the story came from, or what kind of story was it was. According to the program of the play, I found that the story was from Finland and it was a comedy.

The story starts with a song. All songs in the play describe characters, backgrounds, or situations. The story has ten scenes and most of them include a song. Most of the songs, which have very high pitched notes and interesting rhythm, are sung by women singers. On the other hand, some characters sang a song by themselves. Those songs which were sung by characters showed very strong emotion, or their real intention. The rhythms of Finnish folk songs are really beautiful and fun to listen to, but difficult to imitate or remember.

While the stage crew was detaching and re-setting the set between the scenes, a couple came in and started dancing in front of the stage, so people didn’t pay attention to the re-setting of the stage. I thought that was really a good idea to keep audiences enjoying, try not to make them bored, and let the staff build the set quickly.

The play mixed English and Finnish. The actors were speaking mainly English, but sometimes they used Finnish. It made me confused trying to understand, but the rhythm of the mixed language made the story funnier. Thanks to those songs, music, dance and jokes, I really enjoyed the play.