Haribo Kimchi, EIF theatre review: 'brilliantly inventive'
South Korean theatre maker Jaha Koo’s food-themed show is vivid and graceful multi-media meditation on the meaning of home, writes Joyce McMillan
Haribo Kimchi ★ ★ ★ ★
The Studio until 24 August
Created with and at the international Campo arts centre in Ghent, the award-winning South Korean theatre maker Jaha Koo’s latest show is a brilliantly vivid and graceful multi-media meditation on the meaning of home, and of leaving home to migrate across the globe.
On projected video, we fly high over his home city of Seoul, and down into its bustling back alleys; then Jaha Koo appears on stage, opening up his own little late-night hot food bar. He invites two audience members to join him there, begins to cook for them; and the story begins, tracing Jaha Koo’s migrant journey from Seoul to Berlin, and then to Belgium.
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Central to the show is his close and wistful relationship with the natural world now disappearing under city concrete. As he cooks, he introduces us on screen to singing snails and glowing eels, as well as to the explosive qualities of his mother’s kimchi, and the rank racism he sometimes encounters in Europe. The show’s visual and aural presence – video, music, sound and light – is always brilliantly inventive, and sometimes breathtaking.
At the heart of it all, though, is the exquisite quiet grace of Jaha Koo’s performance, each movement a gentle prayer, as he stirs and slices, sears and serves. In the end, he learns, like the eels, to live with a life always on the move; but one where home can still be defined, for a magical 70 minutes or so, by the wonderful tastes, smells and textures of the foods he grew up with – foods that always both remind us of home, and enable us to share that home with others, across the world.
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