These Little Town Blues Are Melting Away

The play takes place somewhere on the coastline of the Baltic Sea, in a place that strictly speaking is not even a village. Water is rising slowly, really slowly, without forming an actual threat, although the danger of flooding is real. Close to the waterline are some houses, inhabited by melancholy Finns who know each other inside out. Some still have dreams. Others just want to float through their lives. The Onni supermarket is sluggishly serving its sluggish customers. At the senior shelters they are busying themselves and secretly looking back at the good old times. It’s Finland in miniature. The world of the play is built up with pictures. These pictures are their own worlds, slow, sometimes almost motionless, like photos. They are slowly moving pictures that you have the time to look at and breathe in the early spring air. There is plenty of space in these pictures, as the sea opens the horizon. The homes are small and the people in them big. But in the supermarket the people become smaller, turn almost invisible. Outdoors, they return to their own sizes.