Korea: Nanta

“What do you get when you cross Jackie Chan with Benihaha?” reads the promotional brochure.

Saturday afternoon Chul and I went to the theater to see Nanta, which the show’s producers translate as “crazy beat.” Chul, more accurately, translated it as “relentless beating.” Both are an apt description of the show.

Nanta is a Korean theater piece that’s (mostly) non-verbal, so any non-Korean dimwit such as yours truly, your loyal and trusty blogger, can enjoy it. It was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1999, where it was a massive hit, and presently a production is playing off-Broadway in New York under the title Cookin’. It’s been playing in Seoul for years with four different casts, where it’s a huge hit with tourists. It’s easy to see why.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but the best way is to envision it is to consider it the stepchild of Stomp and The Iron Chef. You might know Stomp as that theater piece ("play" doesn't seem to be the right word) in which a bunch of actors/athletes bang the heck out of ordinary household objects, impose a total percussive onslaught on the audience, and somehow manage to create very cool theater out of it. The thin thread of a plot is this: Nanta takes place in a kitchen, where three chefs--Head Chef, Woman, and Sexy Guy--and have one hour to prepare a wedding banquet. (For those of you who don’t know, Asian wedding banquets are lavish food affairs, working on the assumption that the happy families invited not only their friends and relatives but the Warsaw Pact nations too.) The kitchen’s manager insists that his Nephew, obviously someone who’s never cooked in his life, be given an apron and a job. This thread of a plot is really an excuse to watch these four acrobatic actors—three men, one woman—bang on pots like Kodo drmmers, throw dishes around and juggle them, engage in culinary taekwondo, and cross The Galloping Gourmet with the UCLA marching band drum line. There is plenty of slapstick and tomfoolery, lots of highly silly audience participation, and a good deal of acrobatics and martial arts thrown in just for the heck of it. After a performance, you understand why there are four different casts: the actors throw off so much energy that they must collapse backstage onto their oxygen tanks after the final bows.

I was the only Caucasian in the audience that I could see, though Chul claims that there were many, many Japanese there as well. (It is interesting that Caucasians can’t really tell Koreans and Japanese apart, but Koreans and Japanese can.) We were all howling with laughter, even audience members that I assumed were normally proper and reserved businessmen, because the show is great fun and the actors are so winning. They actually do chop vegetables up there onstage, though the program assures us that "No vegetables were harmed in the making of this show." (Even so, I was hit by a carrot slice, as we had seats in the front row.) And at the end of the show, when the cutest chef took his bows with the rest of the cast in front of me and Chul—he was of course a full-grown man, but “cute” is exactly the right word to describe him—he looked me straight in the face, grinned as broad as you can possibly imagine, and said, “Thank you!” to me directly through all the applause. I was just charmed.

Nanta is flat-out hilarious. I highly recommend it, should it come to your neck of the woods. Productions have toured the States and Canada, and if you’re near a performing arts center, you never know. If you want to look at its Korean website, here you go: www.nanta.co.kr.

Comments

[sol c. punsalan]

i enjoy your show when i was in korea last year april 2007.The performers were so great, they really made me laugh.Going to Nanta theatre was one of the most unforgetable expirience when i was in korea.Keep up to good job.