Rahamaa draws full houses and critical acclaim in Riga

The Estonian Drama Theatre’s Rahamaa (Business as Usual) played three sold-out performances at Dailes Theatre in Riga from 26 to 28 August.

The production filled the largest theatre auditorium in the Baltics — although, somewhat unexpectedly, most of the audience had travelled to Riga from Estonia. When director Hendrik Toompere Jr accepted an invitation from Dailes Theatre a year ago, the three performances were naturally planned as an opportunity to introduce Rahamaa (Business as Usual) to Latvian audiences. What happened instead became a story in itself: around 85–90 per cent of the tickets were bought by Estonians.

Tickets for Rahamaa in Tallinn continue to sell out within minutes, and for many spectators the Riga performances offered a rare chance to see one of the most sought-after productions in Estonia. The 1,000-seat auditorium at Dailes Theatre was sold out for all three evenings.

Postimees described the performance as technically seamless and emotionally gripping. At the end of the evening, the audience rose for a standing ovation almost immediately, accompanied by cheers and whistles as the actors, playwright Mehis Pihla and director Hendrik Toompere Jr took their bows.

Among the Latvian spectators were Gunta Andžāne and Aldis Andžāns, devoted theatre-goers who see almost every production at Latvian theatres and regularly attend Estonian guest performances as well. They said that Rahamaa passed “in a single breath” and particularly praised the production’s use of live music, which they felt gave the story its emotional and darker undertones.

For Latvian audiences, the production was performed with Latvian surtitles translated by Daila Ozola. The translation demanded more than linguistic precision: Ozola consulted specialists to make sure that banking terminology — some of it dating back more than twenty years — was accurate.

Latvian theatre critic Dita Jonīte, writing for Delfi, found the production striking both in its theatrical form and in the precision of its social criticism. She noted that its combination of live video, close-ups, music and energetic, meticulously coordinated movement felt surprisingly familiar to a Dailes Theatre audience.

Yet Jonīte also pointed to something she felt Latvian theatre could envy: the willingness of Estonian theatre-makers to create socially critical work on this scale while remaining entertaining and accessible. She emphasised the production’s self-critical perspective — Rahamaa tells a story that hardly presents Estonia in a flattering light — and the confidence with which such a story was brought to a major stage.

Jonīte also singled out Tõnis Niinemets’s performance as Artur. Niinemets is on stage for virtually the entire production, and the critic praised both his precision and the way the production’s close-up video allows the audience to follow the character’s inner reactions even when he says nothing.

Perhaps the Riga performances also demonstrated why the story travels so easily across borders. Although Rahamaa begins with a specifically Estonian chapter of the Danske Bank money-laundering scandal, Latvian spectators recognised the mechanisms immediately. Similar questions about banks, Russian money, political responsibility and failed supervision belong to Latvia’s recent history as well.

For three evenings in Riga, then, Rahamaa was both very Estonian and unmistakably Baltic — a story close enough to home to be uncomfortable, and theatrical enough to make an audience want to keep watching.

More about the production →