Review: Jaha Koo: Haribo Kimchi, South Bank Centre

Beginning with a projection of South Korea upon what appears to be a large tent in the middle of the stage, we’re shown some beautiful footage capturing the capital city at night. Before long, the visuals carry us down to the street level, ducking and diving through the roads and passageways until we arrive at our destination, a pojangmacha, or small snack bar of the kind that South Korea is reportedly filled with. This is the setting for the entire show, as three walls from the tent are stripped away to reveal a fully functioning example of a pojangmacha.

It’s an unconventional beginning to a quite unique production, which includes video screens that add a great deal of visual flair to the narratives, as well as one which provides subtitles throughout, as the show is largely, but not wholly, in English. An unusual sense of intimacy is created as our genial host, Jaha Koo, invites two audience members onto the stage to sample the food that he cooks throughout the seventy-minute running time, and which everyone in the room can clearly smell as well.

A mixture of conversational lecture and pre-recorded speeches, the narratives Koo performs at first seem slightly disjointed. One involves him befriending a snail, only to wish later to release him into the wild, while another provides a flashback to his youth and his accidental ruining of the vegetables his mother sold as a side hustle. But after we discover that Koo has left South Korea and spent the last decade living in Germany and Brussels, the anecdotes from incidents in both locations start to flesh out the overall themes of the production.

This idiosyncratic show is made all the more remarkable by the three songs Koo has created, one of which is sung by a snail, another by a gummy bear, and the big finale by a robot eel, which takes to the stage. All three contain computer-generated vocals in a very distinctive and endearing manner, and they’re all earworms too, providing further links between the stories we’ve witnessed during the evening. It’s undoubtedly a bizarre mix, but it’s one that is never less than charming.

Koo has created a pretty unforgettable work here. It deliberately plays with the senses as it explores the themes of taste and sensation, and how both play a very strong part in life, especially when it comes to the ideas revolving around relocation to another country, and the isolation some may feel when far away from family. It’s fascinating without ever feeling didactic, and an inspired piece about the variety of sensory footprints we create and the importance of recognising the effect they have on ourselves and others.

Written & Directed by Jaha Koon
Scenography & Media Operation by Eunkyung Jeong
Dramaturgy by Dries Douibi

Jaha Koo: Haribo Kimchi has now ended its run at the South Bank Centre.