Underground

It’s always difficult describing good, live performance because the quality of presence is so vital to its description, whether it’s being present at the performance, or present face-to-face when you tell someone about what you saw there. Then there’s also the presence of a space, an audience and that of the actors, even a story that seems present and true in the moment, regardless of its oddness.

I suppose this is all leading up to the phrase... you had to be there.

Underground was like a wild night out – the sort you recount proudly as a benchmark for variety, spontaneity, poignancy and fun. If you were a traveller who stumbled into this Korean speakeasy and its nightly retelling of the tale of lost love and found community, you wouldn’t leave until you became part of the story too.

The basement of Metro Arts is one of the ugliest places I’ve ever been, but it has been completely transformed into one of the coolest venues you could dream up. Imagine the collection of a hoarder of kitsch had exploded amongst comfy sofas and bean-bags and you come close.

The entrance to the space is like walking into an installation art piece and the moment you enter, have a welcome shouted at you in Korean, take in the decor and sweet tunes being pumped out by McFly (Thom Browning in DJ, bass playing and MCing mode), you start to understand you’ve just walked into a fringe-dwellers’ haven. As proprietor Tak Hoyoung takes the stage and amiably opens a program (sketched on a blackboard) of ‘music time’, ‘story time’, ‘mystery’ (watermelon intermission) and ‘dance party’, a group of disparate performers separate from the crowd and take you on a journey that defies stylistic convention and pisses in the mainstream.

Through some beautiful, clever and funny music created by director Jeremy Neideck (who also plays Jules, one of the singing, dancing, flute- and accordion-playing ensemble) and Nathan Stoneham (who plays Jinhee, another of the singing, piano- and theremin-playing troupe), these odd outcasts tell the story of the Coconut Princess, his isolation, the loss of his best friend to a whale (Park Younghee as the singing, drumming, dancing Cheolsu), his salvation by a sailor (Abe Mitchell as the singing, sax- and guitar-playing love interest) and his subsequent arrival and acceptance at the Underground bar. Here we also meet the singing, dancing, story-telling hostess Minyo, played to perfection by Lee Chunnam. Do you get the impression the cast are a multi-talented bunch?

Some of the music could easily be released as singles – the welcome song would be an instant gay anthem if they did – and the story-telling in both English and Korean is beautifully done and engaging.

It is a rough piece, but I think it’s deliberately so, and the roughness suits both the setting and story. If it were overly polished it would seem dishonest and less intimate, and would lack impact. It is a simple and cleverly layered string of memorable moments with a superb relationship between the space and the action that should be seen by those who enjoy theatre’s fringe and also by local publicans – because there should be a bar like this in every town somewhere.

Rating: 4 stars

Metro Arts and Motherboard Productions present
Underground
By Jeremy Neideck and Nathan Stoneham
Director: Jeremy Neideck
Assistant Director and Designer: McK McKeague
Producer: Dave Sleswick
Production and Stage Managers: Candice Diana and Alix Lencz
Lighting Design: by Hamish Clift
Costume Design: by Noni Harrison
Cast: Thom Browning, Lee Chunnam, Tak Hoyoung, Abe Mitchell, Jeremy Neideck, Nathan Stoneham, Park Younghee

Metro Arts
109 Edward Street, Brisbane
November 9–26

The video below shows a previous collaboration between Jeremy Neideck and Nathan Stoneham