Novelty value alone enables this bizarre Anglo-Korean effort to transcend its cack-handed staging. Tae is a 1970s adaptation of a Korean legend by one of the country°s leading playwrights, Taesuk Oh, and draws on cultural rituals unknown to British theatregoers. Unfortunately, Gina Lee's bilingual production is clumsily executed in almost all departments. The fact that it's staged in an un-atmospheric church hall accentuates the feeling of watching cross-cultural amateur dramatics.
Tae is an everyday story of bloody dynastic intrigue. The boy-king Dan-jong abdicates in favour of his uncle Se-jo, who proceeds to murder all his opponents and their extended families. It starts promisingly enough, with a storm of drums and cymbals and the passionately ululating voice of Junghwa Lee's Lady Park, a noblewoman who saves her newborn son by swapping him for a servant's child. Things go quickly awry, though.
Wai Kit Tang makes a rather effeminate Se-jo, with his peroxide mane and spangled choker. The choreography, by Aesoon Ahn, is graceless and undisciplined. Gina Lee's adaptation renders some passages in English, some in Korean, for no apparent reason. The confused performances of the multiracial supporting cast underline the fact that East and West have not met here, but collided head on. Worst of all, the story becomes a tiresome parade of killings, untouched by moral import or emotional impact. Any potential atmosphere evaporates into the gloomy corners of the venue.
Through all this, you glimpse snatches of a fascinating, alien theatrical tradition, long-shrouded by isolation (theirs) and cultural xenophobia (ours). But they are only snatches. I'd guess that Gina Lee's anglicised brand of Korean theatre bears the same relationship to the original as most oriental cuisine in London bears to the dishes back home. Experts might discern the authentic roots, but the rest of us see nothing but an unappetising, poorlyprepared approximation. We'll have to wait a while before real Korean theatre is on the menu here.
Tae
