Review: 2:22 A GHOST STORY is an Ode to Imagination, Helsinki City Theatre

2:22 A Ghost story is a brand new piece by Danny Robins and it sure feels like one. It tackles the themes of seen and unseen, science and pseudoscience, lizard brains vs. the ape brains and so on.

A small prologue: I believe in this play’s statement that not all things are ought to be explained scientifically. So many of us laugh at placebo-effect, nevertheless it seems to be working very well in some cases, scientifically. My personal hypothesis also as a physio is this: peoples' interest in the metaphysical, imagination and ancient healing methods keeps on growing. And percisely that if anything is interesting.

But alas. Let’s dig into the review of the performance directed by Paavo Westerberg at Helsinki City Theatre.

Details at hand, for example the approx. the lenght of the show 2h22min or later appearing digital clock on the wall are seemingly finetuned. As we get into the audience the digital clock is moving rapidly. When the lights turn off it’s very highlighted. We get much hinting into noticing the numbers and the concept of time.

I can’t stress enough how intrigued I was by the themes our characters discussed about. Possible past lifes! What if ghosts are Universe’s memories like Facebook memories that pop up from the past? Comparing brainfunctions between monkey, lizard and a human. Not all things can be explained, see? An ode to the imagination and fantasy. At least I left the theatre with a stimulated brain. So the themes really hit the mark in my case.

The house is still in the making and the room is very “believable” (set design by Antti Mattila). I feel like I’m actually peeking into someone’s life through a wall.

The style of the performance is naturalistic, though the acting is finely elevated. Even coffee is made during the performance. I personally love the aquarium-effect, it’s so common for performances to break the 4th-wall these days. The performance is easy to follow to say the least, though some of the fiery dialogues involved too much information, unfortunately.

Something I wondered in the middle of the performance was that where are the “locational” translations in this Finnish version? I hope there had been. Here are my fantasies: make the Queen into Tarja Halonen, American-English into Helsinki dialogue while Cockney-UK-English into Eastern-Finnish dialect. If only they got rights to these things, I doubt they got?

The sound design and composing (by Aleksi Saura) is excellent. The ambience creates just the right tone for the twists and turns. I also enjoyed the jumpscares, even though they made me to create a system with my visual field to know when the jumpscare is coming. A little hint for you to create your own system is hid below the name of the photographer of the show. 

I think the deep message of the play was that as humans we don’t know how to care anymore. It really resonated.

All in all 2:22 A Ghost story gave us what it promised. Suspension, food for thought on metaphysical subjects and on the other hand just mundane life.

If these topics resonate I’d love to suggest learning more of a phenomena called hyperphantasia. Hyperphantasia briefly: you’re so good in imagining things awake that you can even trick your senses. Does this have a link into being “psychic”? Hey, who knows.

Article: Rosanna Ilo Liuski

Photos: Tuomo Manninen

(hint: the lights)

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