Muovikassissa kaikki

Alkuperäinen nimi Muovikassissa kaikki
Kirjoittajat Sirkku Peltola
Alkuperäiskieli Finnish
Kantaesityksen vuosi 1996
Asiasanat Puheteatteri

Synopsis

Set in today’s Finland (premiere 1997), everything takes place in one and the same room.

Characters: 2 w
48-year-old Laina Mäki and her 77-year-old mother

The play’s themes are: loneliness, resignation, exploitation, old age and the limits of responsibility

Muovikassissa kaikki uses intelligent language and humour to tell a story that initially only seems to be the sharp word play between deliciously funny characters, but as it progresses a picture is painted of a gullible, middle-aged woman who has completely lost control over her life as well as her more down-to-earth, harsh seeming mother locked up in the same room with her. It is not until the second half of the play that the hideous nature of the story reveals itself when the mother’s grown-up son, Petteri, steals grandmother’s only fortune, the money she set aside for her own burial. This funny, yet extremely painful story about women who have lost control over their lives turns towards the surrealistic.

Laina has returned back to her roots to her mother’s house with all her belongings in a plastic bag: “I am a widow in so many directions. A surprisingly happy divorcée who doesn’t have anything to mourn over. I slightly open the purse of my throat.” Laina has two sons from whose lives she has obviously become alienated: “one of them is already grown-up, perfectly normal and engaged without hating his mother, the other one, he hates.”
Laina feels like she has no longer any other focal point than her plastic bag. She dreams of being Thumbelina which would bring her closer at getting a glimpse on her sons’ lives. Her sister, atrophied and grown to her spine gives her signs of her existence. “I cry a lot, I laugh a lot. The difference between the two now feels puny” says Laina about her life. “When I was young I was proud of our large generation. I was totally surprised that I had been chosen to be part of the boom. So naturally I started to expect a lot from life.” Laina studied at a vocational school to be an industrial seamstress in an underwear factory.
“Then I fell in love and got married. I started working as a housewife and that has been my profession since... of course nowadays there’s no more house, only the wife...”
Laina tells of her boring domestic life and of one passionate adventure of freedom: “For twenty years I was happily at home. My shop manager husband brought groceries from the shop when he came from work. One August evening I sneaked away to a dance... I was certain, if I didn’t leave now, I would die. I didn’t wake up from the night’s frenzy until a clear summer night when I found myself in a strange man’s car. He was polite and gentle. I existed, lived and breathed. For a split second.” Then the romantic moment was brutally ended, “this gentle and polite man started to strangle me and pushed my head into a feed mill. I shouted for the cows and for Jesus. I don’t know who of the two helped me but I managed to escape... At the end of the night I sat on the kitchen floor and stared at the barrel of a shotgun and my fifteen-year-old son.”
Suddenly out of nowhere appears the poor and miserable Petteri: “Give me the old hag’s money!” he demands of his mother. Apparently this is not the first time. Laina gives him the money, probably like the other times before: “Nine thousand. Do I get some kind of receipt? Does this settle it... Can Petteri trust in this? Aren’t you hanging around with those spoilt druggies? Put it on a savings account and many thanks for the visit, Petteri.”
Laina who always believes in the good in people simply can’t bring herself to tell her mother about Petteri’s visit. She says that she has bought a trip and holiday shares. No reason to get nervous. Now a new life starts for us.
Mother knows, she says laconically: “You’re lying... That was everything. Now I’m too embarrassed to even die.”
Mother says about her child: “Forty-eight years I have watched the results of this frenzy, the sacred mystery of life has but gotten darker hour by hour, minute by minute. Why did you have to get me involved in this big confusion. You cling to me like a big and useless tail. You are this boil... Was it also Petteri?” “I guess.” Laina just has time to answer before her mother dies: “Mother, I will find that money. I’ll start selling handicraft on the market.” Still at the end, Laina makes promises.

Käännökset

Kieli Italian
Käännöksen nimi Tutto in una busta di plastica
Kääntäjät Cilla Back
Oikeuksien myyjä The Finnish Dramatists' Union, http://www.sunklo.fi