Dancing Shadows Provides Little Color
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
After much-hyped anticipation, the musical ``Dancing Shadows'' finally raised its curtains Sunday after eight years of preparation. The musical is an adaptation of the realist play ``Forest Fire'' by the late Korean playwright Cha Bum-suk.
The musical, directed by Paul Garrington and written by Ariel Dorfmann, immediately caught the audience's attention with impressive stage sets, world-class musical scores and flamboyant choreography.
Instead of depicting realistic portrayals of human desires and sadness, history, and various events during the Korean War (1950-1953), the musical switches backgrounds to the village of Constanza, devastated by an internal war.
Two widow characters _ Jum-rye and Sa-wol _ were rewritten as Cinda and Nashtala in the musical version.
An injured guerilla gunman named Gyu-bok, who finds himself in a widows' village located in the Sobaek Mountains, was replaced with the character Solomon.
In the musical version, the widows, who have lost their husbands on the battlefield, struggle under the violence of the Sun Army and the Moon Army.
The widows live in the forest where there is a special, sacred place that villagers believe all the spirits rest.
The widows led by Mama Aster, the village headwoman and Nashtala's aunt, prepare the grains and war supplies for both armies.
Nashtala, who is entitled to guard the forest and believes the forest has vibrant spirits and is the lifeline of the village, conflicts with her aunt over rights to cut trees for war supplies.
During the war between the Moon and Sun armies, Nashtala finds the fugitive Solomon, offers him shelter and falls in love with him.
However, Cinda, Mama Aster's daughter, wants to share Solomon with Nashtala.
Meanwhile, the two armies end their internal hostility and become allies against the foreign armies.
While Nashtala turns her concerns to protecting the forest from the foreign enemies, Cinda develops a physical relationship with Solomon and gets pregnant.
However, the Allies finally decide to burn the forest to defend against possible aggressions from the foreign enemies.
Solomon comes out of hiding and begs the Allies not to destroy the forest, but it is burnt down by the armies. After the forest fire, the villagers find hope in the ashes.
In the musical, the forest becomes more visible, carrying symbolic and multiple meanings such as a place of ecological problems, the soul of life and the peaceful world.
Dorfmann's imagination for ``forest singing'' comes alive through dazzling dances and stage sets.
The musical tries to imbue life and spirit into the forest and make the dead come alive with a hopeful message, taking a realistic situation and transforming it into a dream-like atmosphere.
Instead of seeing realistic portrayals in the original play, the singing forest envisages the villagers praying to safely bring back the men.
The musical transforms the realist play with fantasy storylines, which fit well in the musical genre by symbolizing the forest as a fairytale.
Veteran actress Kim Sung-nyo plays a pivotal role as Mama Aster, weighing in the flow of the performance.
However, the musical seems to fail in delivering a clear and pivotal theme to audiences as it gives various vague messages.
Whether it shows the futility of war, the saving of the forest or the love story, remains unclear.
The musical falls a little short in offering abundant musical scores, rather relying on storytelling.
The acting of Kim Bo-gyeong in the role of Nashtala is bit awkward, mismatching unstable vocals with the role.
The performance might be revamped as a universal performance but much still remains to be desired for keeping the original spirit of Cha's play as its central theme.
The musical will run at Seoul Arts Center, southern Seoul until Aug. 26.