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This review may contain spoilers
Gukgeuk Is Fascinating
This is hard to rate for me. Let me list the good and bad and go from there.
The Good:
• I like Kim Tae Ri, and she does a fine job here. So does the entire cast.
• The drama subverted my expectations; I never really knew where it was going.
• Jeongnyeon introduced me to pansori and gukgeuk, which I found fascinating and extremely interesting. So much so that I looked up the history of each. Pansori was storytelling with one singer and one drummer. It could be as long as EIGHT to TEN hours long. These productions were very limited; twelve are known, but only five have been passed down. Gukgeuk was an all-female performing troupe that performed pansori with costumes, acting, and sets (similar to opera), but in a shorter form more palatable to the audiences of the 1940s and 1950s.
The Bad:
• I found it hard to sympathize with Jeongnyeon when she was suffering at her worst. When your best friends beg you not to strain your voice, when your mentor warns you against overusing your voice, and common sense tells you not damage your voice, then I guess you live with the consequences when you disregard them. The drama lost me at that point, and my enjoyment decreased greatly. I'd been in Jeongnyeon's corner up to that point, even though she should have been booted out of the company numerous times for her antics (self-centered grandstanding onstage), but that was it for me. Seriously, she was an exhausting character: stubborn, strong-willed, irrational, and inconsiderate. Even so, I liked her!
• The drama subverted my expectations; I never really knew where it was going. When a drama introduces a main character early on, I expect something monumental to happen with that character. Jung Eun Chae played Moon Ok Geong beautifully—easily one of the most memorable characters of the drama—but then she just disappeared and was never heard from again. As for the ending, the bad guys won; the good guys lost. Everyone was to be scattered, and that was presented as a happy ending.
Final analysis: it's worth the watch to see the performances of gukgeuk.
The Good:
• I like Kim Tae Ri, and she does a fine job here. So does the entire cast.
• The drama subverted my expectations; I never really knew where it was going.
• Jeongnyeon introduced me to pansori and gukgeuk, which I found fascinating and extremely interesting. So much so that I looked up the history of each. Pansori was storytelling with one singer and one drummer. It could be as long as EIGHT to TEN hours long. These productions were very limited; twelve are known, but only five have been passed down. Gukgeuk was an all-female performing troupe that performed pansori with costumes, acting, and sets (similar to opera), but in a shorter form more palatable to the audiences of the 1940s and 1950s.
The Bad:
• I found it hard to sympathize with Jeongnyeon when she was suffering at her worst. When your best friends beg you not to strain your voice, when your mentor warns you against overusing your voice, and common sense tells you not damage your voice, then I guess you live with the consequences when you disregard them. The drama lost me at that point, and my enjoyment decreased greatly. I'd been in Jeongnyeon's corner up to that point, even though she should have been booted out of the company numerous times for her antics (self-centered grandstanding onstage), but that was it for me. Seriously, she was an exhausting character: stubborn, strong-willed, irrational, and inconsiderate. Even so, I liked her!
• The drama subverted my expectations; I never really knew where it was going. When a drama introduces a main character early on, I expect something monumental to happen with that character. Jung Eun Chae played Moon Ok Geong beautifully—easily one of the most memorable characters of the drama—but then she just disappeared and was never heard from again. As for the ending, the bad guys won; the good guys lost. Everyone was to be scattered, and that was presented as a happy ending.
Final analysis: it's worth the watch to see the performances of gukgeuk.
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