Alma Pöysti and Ylva Ekblad will play Tove Jansson in Lucas Svensson’s TOVE play
Svenska Teatern, (the Swedish Theatre) in Finland will next year celebrate its 150th anniversary. The grand production for the anniversary year is Lucas Svensson’s play TOVE directed by Fiikka Forsman. Alma Pöysti and Ylva Ekblad will play Tove Jansson at different ages.
“At the moment, I’m working at the Stockholm City Theatre. However, the role of Tove was a great opportunity, which of course I wanted to take. The manuscript is brilliant, and it’s great to familiarize myself with the role of so extraordinary person”, Alma Pöysti, the younger Tove, says.
“Lucas Svensson really has captured the essence of Tove as an artist and human and describes beautifully how Tove was searching for her identity as an artist and what kind of process she was going through. The war-time and Tove’s bold anti-war attitude are very interesting”, Pöysti continues.
Alma Pöysti’s grandparents, Birgitta Ulfsson and Lasse Pöysti, are remembered from Tove Jansson’s early theatre productions. Ulfsson, performed in the very first Moomin play Mumintrollet och kometen in Svenska Teatern back in 1949. She toured with Lilla Teatern around the Nordic countries at the end of the 1950s with the play Troll i kulisserna. Ulfsson also directed the same play in Helsingin Kaupunginteatteri (Helsinki City Theatre) in 2002.
In the play Mumintrollet och kometen, 1958, Moomintroll was played by actor Lasse Pöysti. This role helped him to raise to fame in Scandinavia and determined for a long time how Moomintroll should be portrayed.
Photo: Rembrandt, SLS arkiv, SLSA 1210
Actors in a photo: Lasse Pöysti (Muoomintroll), Eva Perander (Fillyjonk) ja Birgitta Ulfsson (Emma)
“Tove’s stories were part of my childhood, and they have, of course, influenced me. Her imagination, love of freedom, and her courage feel familiar to me. My grandparents played in the first Moomin plays and were also Tove’s close friends. It is great that now, together with Ylva, we have a possibility to play the person behind all these great stories loved all over the world”, says Pöysti.
“I feel very familiar with Tove Jansson myself, and I’m pleased to get to focus on her as a person. Like Tove, also my heart is close to nature and the sea, to sitting quietly and marking my ideas to memory”, Ylva Ekblad, the older Tove, says.
The play’s rehearsals begin before Christmas, and the play premieres in Helsinki on February 8th, 2017.
The play is subtitled in Swedish and Finnish.