Best Loved Songs and Melodies

’Suuri toivelaulukirja’ (”Best Loved Songs and Melodies”) was the graduation work of Anne Koski for the Finnish Theatre Academy. Already at the time of her studies, Koski’s plays employed impressive atmospheres, and this is true also of Best Loved Songs and Melodies, where the overall atmosphere becomes a significant element of the play. The play begins with a meeting that takes place between a man, freed after a long prison term, and his grown-up daughter. As the play progresses, the long-separated father and daughter beging to get to know each other, and their reminiscing reveals the cause of the father’s prison sentence: he killed his wife because of an affair that she had with the daughter’s piano teacher. Over the years, the daughter has shared her father’s sense of culpability, feeling that she had brought her mother and the teacher together. The characters of the play are drawn with detail and insightful understanding. The finesse of the plot, meanwhile, lies not so much in any striking elements, but rather in the feeling of redemption and survival that arises from the story. The daughter has forgiven her father, and convinces the court to acquit him. In the end the father is free, and following their meeting also the daughter is now freed, finally able to go on with her life. (Tinfo/Sunklo)