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'Cookin'up a storm

Nanta (Cookin) returns to Taipei for a fourth time. PHOTO: COURTESY OF A PLUS

Combine a cantankerous manager and mischievous cooks with frenetic drumming and furious cutting, and what do you get? Nanta, an entertaining spectacle that blends traditional Korean percussion with contemporary musical theater in a fast-paced performance. The show makes its third Taiwan appearance beginning tonight at the Taipei International Convention Center and will run until Sunday.

“Nanta” is a Korean word that figuratively refers to reckless punching. But if brutality underlies the title, the work is madcap comedy rather than violent tragedy.

The non-verbal performance tells the story of a demanding manager and the three chefs he orders to cook an important wedding banquet in an impossibly short period of time. Adding to the feeling of crisis, the manager forces his inexperienced and dim-witted nephew to work with the chefs. At first they object, but need overcomes annoyance, and the chefs reluctantly accept the nephew as one of the team.

The performance is characterized by the rhythms of samul nori, the simultaneous banging of four traditional Korean percussion instruments — a barrel drum, hourglass drum, large gong and small gong — and the wild movements of nong-ak, a folk genre comprising music, dance and acrobatics from Chungcheong, a province located in the southern part of the Korean peninsula.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF A PLUS

In Nanta, however, drums fashioned from kitchen utensils — pots, pans, dishes, knives, chopping boards, water bottles and brooms — replace the instruments traditionally used in samul nori. Despite its unconventional presentation, the traditional music remains at the heart of the show and is well utilized to give Nanta its unique quality, illustrating the primitive, explosive power of samul nori.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF A PLUS

As the chefs run back and forth at the beck and call of the manager — all the while cooking a feast and pounding out their beats — they create visual humor and aural fun.

Known internationally as Cookin, Nanta has been a local phenomenon in South Korea since it premiered in October, 1997, drawing the largest number of spectators of any Korean stage production.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF A PLUS

Nanta made its international debut in 1999 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it received an award for best performance. Since then, it has been staged in the UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands and Australia. The show premiered at the Off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theater in 2004, where it ran for a year-and-a-half to packed houses.

Nanta is presented in Seoul to more than 300,000 tourists every year at two exclusive theaters: Cookin'Theater in the north and PMC Theater in the south. A third theater devoted to the comedy will open on Jeju Island next month. 

Performance notes What: Nanta (Cookin) Where: Taipei International Convention Center (台北國際會議中心大會堂), 1, Xinyi Rd Sec 5, Taipei City (台北市信義路五段1號) When: Today and tomorrow at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm Tickets: NT$900 to NT$2,500 and are available through ERA ticketing

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