Korean pop music — or "K-pop" — is so big that even your grandad knows the tune to "Gangnam Style". And yet no individual Korean performer has ever quite broken America. That lack of lasting success provides the pretext for Jason Kim and Woodshed Collective's new immersive promenade musical, which opens with husband-and-wife impresarios Moon (James Saito) and Ruby (Vanessa Kai) inviting the audience into their "K-Pop Factory" to help them figure out how to manufacture a Korean Justin Bieber.
As we are led from dressing room to rehearsal studio to plastic-surgery clinic, it soon becomes clear that the fluttering eyelashes, spangly costumes and breakneck dance routines conceal a world of pain. Moon and Ruby treat their youthful starlets like battery chickens, feeding them pre-packaged songs and lectures about how to be "perfect" in a cut-throat, distinctly cultish environment.
Meanwhile, specialised instructors pile on the sadistic pressure during dance, singing, and media-training lessons: not just to create accomplished yet expendable performers, but also to ensure they "lose the accent" and thence thrive in anglophone markets.
It all adds up to a bittersweet cocktail of superficial jauntiness cut with ruthless exploitation, which recalls real-life scandals about so-called slave contracts in the K-pop industry.
"This is where the sausage is made," as Ebony Williams's Nurse Ratched-like dance teacher puts it. And there lies the problem. For once we learn where the music comes from, the numbers themselves (by Helen Park and Max Vernon) tend to sound mechanical. Dramatic tension also dissipates as the secrets of the miserable reality within the gilded cage are revealed too quickly. And, under Teddy Bergman's direction, attempts at getting the audience involved never quite come off.
Yet KPOP does occasionally burst into life over the course of two and a half hours. A number about being "a wind-up doll" perfectly sums up the dubious thrills of made-to-order celebrity. And the tyrannised pop idols all go out with a bang worthy of Dr Strangelove, singing "blast off" as V-2 rockets soar away on screens behind. Such timely gallows humour ought to be a sure-fire hit.
★★★☆☆
To October 7, arsnovanyc.com
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