The 2017 Off-Broadway incarnation of the new musical KPOP opened at a venue just a few blocks away from its current Broadway home at the Circle in the Square. But despite the short distance, much of the show’s impact has been lost along the way. The original production was immersive, with segments of the audience moving from one location to another to witness the aching workloads and personal conflicts of young Korean performers to achieve stardom under the guidance of an ambitious record label. That aspect has been necessarily and understandably lost in the show’s transition to a traditional Broadway theater, albeit the only one featuring in-the-round seating. Unfortunately, much of what made the earlier production interesting has been discarded as well, resulting in a more sanitized, less thematically interesting experience that mainly relies on the propulsive energy of its many musical numbers to fuel the evening. The end result provides a reasonably enjoyable facsimile of K-Pop music, but it’s certainly not the same KPOP.
To be fair, some elements of the show’s book written by Jason Kim needed changing anyway. Much of the original production dealt with the efforts of the record label to break into an American market unfamiliar with Korean pop. That’s now sadly outdated, as such groups as BTS and Blackpink, among many others, routinely sell out arenas and even stadiums. The immersive angle has been replaced by a new plotline involving a filmmaker (Aubie Merrylees) attempting to shoot a behind-the-scenes documentary about the record label’s acts, with several scenes taking place offstage and shown via video monitors. But the rudimentary plot device feels hackneyed and the use of video has by now come to feel cliched onstage.
The show never really had in-depth characterizations or a compelling storyline, but it did have an arresting theme, namely the draconian process inflicted on young K-Pop performers that makes the teaching methods used by Motown in its early days seem like summer camp. Those scenes gave the show a powerful edginess very much lacking in this version, and have lost none of their relevancy considering the epidemic of suicides among young K-Pop performers that continues to this day.
As before, the show features a girl group, RTMIS (Min, Bohyung, Kate Mina Lin, Amy Keum, Julia Abueva), a boy band, F8 (Jiho Kang, John Yi, Joshua Lee, Kevin Woo, Abraham Lim, Eddy Lee, James Kho, Zachary Noah Piser) and a rising solo star, MwE (real-life K-Pop star Luna). There is a vague plotline involving F8’s hostility toward its newest member, Brad (Piser), fueled by his bi-racial background, while we don’t get to know very much about the individual members of RTMIS. The main storyline, such as it is, revolves around MwE, who we see in a series of flashbacks developing from an awkward nine-year-old with no dance skills to a polished star. Eventually she gets into a conflict with her record label’s head honcho, Ruby (Jully Lee), who has become a sort of surrogate mother and who objects to MwE’s romance with a former childhood friend.
Mainly, the show is an excuse for a series of glossy pop numbers composed by Helen Park and Max Vernon, sung in both Korean and English, that expertly mimic the music and choreography of contemporary K-Pop groups. Accompanied by elaborate lighting and video projections, the peppy songs feature the young performers delivering full-throttle vocals and highly energetic dance routines, choreographed by Jennifer Weber (& Juliet) that are as mechanical-feeling as they are physically impressive.
Your enjoyment of the evening will depend on your appreciation for this brand of pop music that makes the bubblegum hits of the ‘60s feel like Gregorian chants. Personally, a little of it goes a long way for me, but I’m clearly not the target demographic for the show whose audience featured many younger theatergoers, including children, clearly enjoying themselves.
As effectively staged by Teddy Bergman, KPOP certainly proves impressive on a technical level. The costumes designed by Clint Ramos are consistently dazzling, and the glitzy musical numbers probably wouldn’t look out of place in Madison Square Garden. Which begs the question: with so many actual K-pop acts now appearing in the area on a regular basis, why not go for the real thing instead of a highly proficient reproduction?
KPOP opened November 27, 2022, at Circle in the Square. Tickets and information: kpopbroadway.com
