Korean troupe EG Musical Company present the brand new tear-jerking musical, You and It.
One to watch for lovers of new musical theatre
Mina (Jane Chun) is involved in an accident and Gyujin (Sanghyeok Kim) attempts to rebuild their love with the memories they shared together. When Mina returns, their hope dwindles when she starts making technological changes to the house they once loved, striving for ‘newness’ and efficiency. The couple find themselves moving at different paces and something seems amiss. With soaring melodies and poetic phrasing, You and It delivers musical theatre that pulls at the heartstrings.
Told in retrospect, Gyujin looks back on his life with Mina, assuring the audience that “this is a love story”. The show is narrated from his point of view with moments of insight into Mina’s experience, mirroring his desire to re-shape and mould their life together.
Accompanied by piano and backing track, the music resembles soft Disney tunes and contemporary musical theatre. The songs are both lyrical and catchy, with motifs that reappear to enhance the storytelling. Chun’s Mina is subtle and endearing, and she stands out with her soft tone and impressive vocals, delivering an enchanting performance.
The main drawback of the show is that the narrative jumps forward quite a bit in the beginning, making it harder to grasp. The deliberate ambiguity surrounding Mina’s accident (though integral to the climactic reveal) is difficult to ignore, making some of the scenes slightly confusing, especially with the minimal set.
Nevertheless, the show’s themes remain clear: renewal, memory, perfection, the age-old debate between romanticism versus classicism, logic versus creativity, heart versus head. Can we ever replicate the past? What makes us different from a set of data? Poetically explored in the production, such questions are growing evermore salient as technology advances and lines between humans and technology are blurred, making this musical especially topical.
This is certainly one to watch for lovers of new musical theatre, especially those who are interested in seeing a show from international creatives. Moving and intelligent, EG Musical Company have produced a high quality piece of theatre.
