Haribo Kimchi - Perth Festival

Reviewed by Paul Treasure

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In the middle of the stage sits a Pojangmacha, a portable food stall, curtained and quiet, with its white walls and red canopied roof lit from the inside. It sits there as the audience files in, closed, abandoned, full of promise and anticipation. The lights dim, and we are suddenly immersed in a brightly lit nocturnal cityscape projected on the walls of the pojangmacha and on two large video screens that we had previously been almost unaware of. The cityscape recedes as a single figure walks out onto the stage. He slowly and gently removes the front and side curtains, folds them up and puts them aside. He turns to the front, looking at the audience, scanning us, then turns his attention to two women seated together in the front row. He goes across to them and very quietly asks if they have any allergies and if they like Korean food. He then asks them to join him onstage.

The man is Jaha Koo, he is the creator of this evening’s performance, and his two guests are about to have a uniquely magical theatrical experience. Koo comes across as very gentle and humble.

There is very little sense that he is acting or performing; instead, he is sharing with us stories of his life that are genuine and sincere. Once his guests are comfortable, he offers them a drink, introducing a lot of the audience to Somaek, an iconic Korean drink that is a combination of Soju and beer (Maekju). Once his guests are served, he launches into the first section of the evening. The show is divided into three sections, each with a very similar layout. First, he gives us a brief introduction to the dish he is about to prepare. Then he starts talking to us about incidents in his life that somehow reflect this dish. At some point, he stops talking so he can concentrate on the cooking, but the video screens take over, as we watch a video in Korean, shot and narrated by Koo, that goes deeper into what he had previously talked about. We then return to Koo as he presents the dish to his guests, and as they eat, the section finishes with a video clip of a song written by Koo. The format is fairly simple in design but very clever in the way it is presented.

In the first section, Koo talks about the time he found a small snail on a cabbage he had just bought. He decided to keep this snail as a pet for a while, only to release him back into nature after the snail seemed to sicken in captivity. He regaled us with a story from his childhood, and about the time he ruined his Grandmother’s batch of dried radish leaves while playing Hide and Seek. Her garden shed had jars of homemade kimchi buried in front of the door, but inside, the radish leaves were drying. And he inadvertently shut the door to the shed, so the radishes quickly grew mouldy and had to be thrown out. Because kimchi needs to suffocate, but radish leaves need to breathe. This motif of kimchi needing to suffocate returns throughout the performance. The section ends with an unbelievably cute song played on the video screens, sung by Gona, his pet snail.

The next section is about Koo’s emigration to Europe. Kimchi features yet again as he regales us with his misadventures with a large bag of homemade kimchi that explodes on his balcony, which leads to a visit from the police as his neighbours mistake the thick red liquid that has gone everywhere for human blood. This section is full of the heartbreak and loneliness of someone who has moved far from home for the first time, as he negotiates the need for familiar comforts, as well as the exploration of new possibilities, as represented by the greatest of all comforts, the Haribo bear.

Having now established himself in Europe, the final section is all about returning home to visit and how things inevitably change. The central story of this section is about him visiting an old friend at his place of work, an eel farm. Coincidentally, during the visit, there is a malfunction and a large number of eels escape, with Koo joining in the efforts to recapture as many of the eels as possible before they make it to the closest waterway. One of the eels has definitely escaped, however, and it is this eel that sings the next song. Soon after the eel appears on the screen, it becomes apparent that, unlike the previous videos, this one is not pre-recorded. A small robot eel has made its way onto stage, and we are watching it in extreme close-up as it makes its way around the acting space.

After this, Koo sums up the show, thanks his two guests who have been onstage the entire time, and finishes with a final song sung, "Gona the Snail, Haribo Bear, and the Eel". The concept itself is simple and very Korean. The food, the music, the imagery, the stories. And yet, because of its very specificity, it helps to explore the universal truths and experiences of any diasporic individual. Leaving the comforts and familiarities of home to find their own place in the world. To paraphrase the final song, our routes are more important than our roots.

If the concept is simple, the delivery is not. It is a glorious technical achievement, made all the more amazing that every single element, the script, the videography, the songs, the cooking, all of them that in any other production would have required a team of creatives, were all done by the evening’s performer, Jaha Koo. At an event like the Perth Festival, the word “unique” is often bandied about and can become trite and overused. But this production was definitely unique, and I hope that Perth Festival invite Koo back again in the future.

Postscript:

The performance this reviewer attended was followed by a Q&A session with the creator. It often amazes me why so many people decide to leave early and pass up the opportunity to attend one of these sessions when they’re available. There is often at least one question that is well thought out and provides an answer that throws open a whole new facet of the performance. In particular, on this evening there was a question that led to Koo discussing the differences in the reaction to the show between cities that are largely monocultural, and those that have a large multicultural population, like Perth, where most people can relate in some way to the theme either because of their own experiences, or because they know people who have experienced it. Kudos also to the host of the Q&A session, who identified a misguided and potentially problematic question and quickly moved on to the next question.

Image credit: Bea Borgers

Reviewer Note: Tickets for this review were provided by Perth Festival.