Le Roi Soleil

Last weekend Nexen was playing in Pusan, but I had plans for both days to I stayed in Seoul. After the wedding on Saturday, I had a musical on Sunday night. The tickets to the musical were given to all teachers from one of our student's mom. We could ask for 2 so I did and I invited a friend out. I feel like watching a musical alone is kind of awkward. Rich people are lucky, they have enough to spare not only for their kid's teachers, but for unknown people that would go with them, I think the tickets were $130 each and we were in the VIP section. 

I chose the date I wanted: the Sunday of the second week of the presentation. 

Thing is, after the first week, articles started to come out big time : Big budget, horrible singers: The big disappointment. Thing is, the main character is an actor, not a singer. I was told by my friend who wen to the show, that he was actually pretty good, but that there were high notes that he just couldn't render as good as the other.

So I was kind of dreading it. 

My friend, a big musical fan whose sister is actually a musical actress, sounded pretty upset when he heard about the critics. Told him he didn't need to come. 

Why would I need to force someone who didn't want to see it. Shame on him. It was actually a great show. I invited a girl friend and we did a dinner coffee musical date instead. I had a great time.

I didn't take pictures with my phone during the show, least I'd disturb the people around us, so those pics are actually from this website http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=119055 and I do not claim any of those as mine. 

I was really impressed by the voice of two of the supp. characters. A girl and a boy, who both had charisma and strength in their voices, and I loved the acting skills of the guy playing Louis's little brother. The main actor's voice, as I was told, was much more beautiful when he sang lower tone songs, so it was a shame that the main theme, that came back three time throughout the musical, had so many. His acting was great regardless, and he had a good complicity with the other actors. I think I must have liked the musical all the more because I expected the worst. 

It was a huge-scale show with amazing dancers, acrobats, singers and an incredible amount of backgrounds. Having played in small scale 4 musicals before, I could tell this had require an incredible amount of work and money to set up. 

And not only because they paid for the lead actor's face to be on the advertisement pamphlets.

The musical Le Roi Soleil roughly tell the life story of Louis XIV, the French womanizer king. There is much more to Louis XIV's life than women, but in the musical that is one of the main focus. 

The musical is the adaptation of the French musical written by Lionel Florence and Patrice Guirao from 2005. What I found really interesting is the way the musical was adapted in a very clever way, making it a Korean musical, while keeping the spirit of the French musical alive. There was a slight nudge of Korea in every single part of the musical. 

Costumes were more colourful, more poofy, more impressive looking, dresses reminding of the flower shape of the Korean hanbok, while still keeping the European lines of the outfits. The lead female character wearing light green, the color of the Korean bride in hanbok, is also one of the things I noticed as a Korean influcence. I don't know how much of those small things I noticed were intended, and how much of those were just naturally put this way because they just felt right for the designers, but anyways. In most western stories, we'd go for a pale pink or blue, to display the image of maidenhood and innocence.  

Interactions between the characters in Korean was reminding me more of the Joseon Era TV shows than the French court, that and the way they displayed respect with the slight head bowing and the way they called on each other. In this case, however, I don't see how they could have used a different way to communicate in Korean, than using their own vocabulary related to royalty, so this was not necessarily meant to "koreanize" the musical. 

There is a whole scene that is yelling KOREA, however, without any doubt. I have yet to listen to the original version of the musical to really be able to compare, but the scene where the Spanish princess goes to a witch to curse other ladies - or more precisely, ask of Louis that he does not look at any other women - is definitely not European. There is a big shamanistic looking tree with the typical long red strings of fabric hanging  down, and the witch herself has this way of speaking reminiscent of the Korean shaman women. I like that image of the Korean-French witch. I particularly enjoyed that scene.

From The Airport - Hongdae

Last weekend was really busy for me. I cleaned up my new apartment all afternoon up to the very last minute I could, then left for Hongdae. A senior (weird how we don't really use that naming in English, but as Korea has rubbed on me, and he is older than me, I feel weird saying "friend") from McGill I met through Minho (met in China: isn't it amazing to have Korean acquaintances that you have met in China? I love how my stories are always more complicated than they need to be...) was having a concert in Hongdae at 8PM. I have mentioned him before, when I wrote about in a previous blog entry, and said I did narration on one of his songs, BLACK SKIES.

So I obviously went to see his show. I don't know what I was expecting, but I couldn't have been happier. I am a big pop music fan, for "music" lovers, what I like usually is crap, but while I love pop, I like all kinds of music as long as it's not too death-metal-sounding (mind you, I admire the artist's research when it comes to death metal's instrumental, I just don't like the yelling part) French rap or western (unless I am in a western bar with people who know those in-line dances and do them together, in this one particular scenario I love western music).

Anyways, straying again...

The show was just the prefect length for a standing concert and the room, while being full, was not packed to the extent of having to look for place to put your feet at. I was really happy with everything in general. They had lockers for jackets (I love Korea) and the room was pretty clean, giving an almost high classy feeling. If you want to get there, here are the direction Min sent me to get there, and even me, who gets lost in a phone box, got there with no problem. I love GPS in phones, makes it so easy to get around. I don't remember the name of the concert avenue though ha ha.. Might edit this entry later and add...

**.... omg U_U I had to stop writing. "Let it Go" started playing in the coffe shop I'm stationed at. This song has taken over Korea... how many months have passed since the movie is out? **

...the name of the place.

I was like SUPER underdressed. I had helped out at a school's market day in the morning and dressed up warmly to stand the cold outside for the few hours I'd have to stand outside, then got to cleaning my apartment and went there directly, so I was wearing short boots black pants and a long red woollen sweater with my hair down. I was thinking, hm, it's hongdae, people are more "grungy" than the pretty dressed up style people wear in say, Gangnam. Well appears Hongdae has more than one type of people hanging out there and I still have a lot to learn. 

People at the concert avenue were all dressed-up, heels, dresses and clean-cut jackets, suits, formal/semi-formal ... and there was me. Even Min, who came with his date, was all dressed-up. Man I felt soooo sexy

The only good point was that, for once, I was not overly tall, as all the people sort of had heels. I actually felt short over my 173cm, trying to see the front stage, with tall koreans all around. It felt quite disorientated for a while. 

Then music took over everything else. I was not expecting much "liveliness" from a band with only two people doing everything on their own, but they were great. There was something on stage, that I have rarely seen. It was everything but boring and I suggest anyone who gets a chance, to go see them play. 

If it can be proof enough, I did not take any pictures or film anything as I was watching, because I didn't want to miss the show (now, I regret not having done so, because I only have words to describe the concert, and well. You need to believe me don't you?

After the show I went out with Min and a couple of his friends for a drink and as most of the places we wanted to go to were full so we ended up going to this Japanese place that had amazing food. We also drank Sake-lemon-soda, A mix I had never had before and really liked. To be honest, I don't like the flowery taste of sake, so I was dreading it, but mixed like this it tastes amazing!

Sake lemon soda heaven mix

We had a lot of different yummy foods, but my personal favourite was the tuna tataki.