Release date is 2025-12-04

Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

"Isä ja tytär" by Toivo Tarvas is a play written in the early 20th century. Set in contemporary Helsinki, it follows Leila, a musically gifted working-class girl, and her volatile, alcohol-dependent father Valtonen as they navigate poverty, grief, and the gaze of a judgmental society. Neighbors, petty officials, and students hover between condescension, opportunism, and genuine care, sharpening the drama’s class contrasts. It is a story of a fragile parent–child bond and a young woman’s vulnerability amid urban hardship.

The opening of the play moves from a dim tenement wake to the bustle of the Esplanade and a bourgeois parlor. First, Leila keeps vigil by her mother’s coffin, comforts her timid friend, and recounts the death, while Emblundska organizes the peijaiset; Valtonen barges in drunk with a crony, bullies Leila for her mother’s earrings, and swings between bragging affection and cruelty as mourners sing and the coffin is carried out. Next, Leila sells lemonade, endures rowdy schoolboys and a wary policeman, hears Emblundska and Nanna boast of new status, and becomes the focus of two young men: one (Albert) warns her, the other (Savander) presses his advantage—culminating in his forcing himself into the kiosk and a violent struggle that Albert interrupts by smashing the window. The third act begins in the Pahlmans’ parlor, where domestic fuss and gossip about Senate work, social climbing, Leila’s progress at the music school, and her father’s decline frame the class-bound world into which the girl has been drawn. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Porvoo: WSOY, 1908