Friday, October 19, 2012

The smell of mint.



Mündi lõhn is the name of the play that I went to see today. And it is absolutely one of THE best plays that I have seen and trust me, when you work in a theater, you see a shit ton of plays (Most recently VAT theater: The good, the bad and the ugly and that play was pretty much shit. imho.). Anyway. The smell of mint.
I'll give you a quick rundown of what it speaks about:

You've all been to the Kuressaare castle, right? If so then probably you have seen that skeleton in the cellar and may even have read from the little information thing on the door about the myth surrounding said skeleton. If you haven't then wikipedia helps us out (in estonian, suck it.)

Palju kõneainet on pakkunud väike kelder, kuhu viib uks hoovi idanurgast. Legendi kohaselt olevat see kinnimüüritud kelder juhuslikult avatud 1785. aastal ning siit leiti inimese luukere. See kuulunud 16. sajandi algul Saaremaale protestantismiga võitlema saadetud inkvisiitorist mungale, kes avalikuks tulnud armuloo pärast karistuseks elusana kinni müüritud. Ruumi nimetatakse veel praegugi "sissemüüritud rüütli keldriks".



And that, to the letter, is what the play is about. It starts off not quite in modern day but close enough to it with the minister of god knows what buys the castle and moves in with his family. They of course, refuse to believe the maids and servants that the castle is haunted and write the odd sounds off as wind or rusty hinges.  One day, however, the beautiful daughter of the minister meets the ghost and manages to talk him into telling her his story. The story of how he died.

The second act takes place in 1500s and shows us how this man of faith came to Kuressaare (that wasn't a city yet at the time) to scold the local castle bailiff, who made business with the Prussians and were acting very un-holy-like. Needless to say the local bosses didn't like that one bit and devised a plan to get rid of him: they sent him a maid, a picture-perfect girl whom he couldn't help but fall in love with. Of course it is no big spoiler to anyone that the bailiff and his right-hand man then proceed to punish that monk by sealing him, alive, into the cellar of the castle and the girl was sent off to a monastery. 

The story may not sound all that compelling, but seeing as the play actually happens in the Kuressaare castle, it becomes magical. The ministers daughter in the first act and the monks maid, Õnne, in the second act was portrayed by Merilin Kirbits.

Picture Source
The ghost of the monk and later the monk himself was Hannes Prikk, who is my most favorite actor of all times, you may remember another play that I absolutely loved, Värviline Kummut, where he was also the lead character. (Also Mererüüvel vastu tahtmist, that is my MOST FAVOURITE PLAY OF. ALL. TIME.)

As a little bonus, also on the picture is my classmate, Airike. Picture source.
The minister, and later the castle bailiff was portrayed by none other than my daddy-dearest, which, of course makes me sort of biased when it comes to the whole play but whatever. It's still a great play. 

I refuse to use a picture from my personal source so you'll get this picture of the whole cast instead. Daddy is on the far right. Picture source.
And finally, the butler who always slept and the right-hand man of the bailiff were portrayed by Priit Lõhmus, who is also one of the best local actors, in my opinion.

I hope i'm not wrong in assuming he's in the middle there. Picture Source.
And yes, now all I have to do is write an essay about it in estonian. Shouldn't be too hard. I hope.

Also, I went to see Sofi Oksanen's purge in the theater cinema but I'm not going to write about it because it's something that has to be experienced rather than read about.

-Kels

3 comments:

  1. Vabalt saan, sa tegid Mündi lõhnast just kokkuvõtte ja ma käisin Cabaret'd vaatamas, nii et :K

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