Take along your dancing shoes for this rousing, roof-raising collaboration between Glasgow’s Wonder Fools theatre company and South Korea’s Theatre SAN: you may well find yourself up on your feet in raucous celebration. But don’t forget a hankie either: to say Tether 인연 is a weepie is a bit of an understatement.
But crucially, this newly created show – getting its first performances at this year’s Fringe – is never mawkish or manipulative, but conjures its considerable emotional gut-punch from lovingly drawn characters and intricate but entirely convincing storylines (even if they’re not always entirely straightforward to follow). Taking in an ambitious three-time-period narrative involving a young Korean theology student rocking up in Glasgow, the First World War and the Korean War, a tender love affair, an unforgettable song and a fading memory, it finds illuminating connections and parallels between Scottish and Korean cultures that seldom feel arbitrary or contrived, but instead point out little-known corners of history as the backdrop to its emotionally resonant story.
The collaboration, too, stretches to actors and musicians: the bilingual spoken script is repeated in similarly bilingual surtitles, and Korean multi-instrumentalist Seyoung Lee joins the otherwise all-Scottish ceilidh band in – well, quite a lot of ceilidh tunes, plus a few significant Korean musical numbers too. Technically, it’s all quite complex, but still manages to feel effortless.
At an hour long, Tether 인연 perhaps struggles to explore the details of its multi-timeline storyline, but its overall emotional arc (itself an integral part of the show’s composite tale) emerges with powerful clarity. Performances are universally strong, particularly a prickly Molly Bryson and winningly naive Hyeonkyu Choi as young lovers Jane and Dae Han, and Isabella Jarrett as an older and more jaded Jane, hardened by time and loss. Co-direction from Wonder Fools’ Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse, and from Theatre SAN’s Yoon Junghwan, keeps the energy high and the pace smoothly brisk. And it’s a production that’s clearly as proud of its Scottish roots (well, more specifically its Glaswegian roots, as a brilliantly aimed Edinburgh gag makes clear) as it is of its equally important South Korean ingredients too.
Tether 인연 is a deeply moving creation, not only in its unapologetically tear-jerking storyline, but also in its deep sense of collaboration and connection between apparently distant cultures. And in trusting an audience with a perhaps unfamiliar and certainly intricate storyline, but injecting its tale with such emotional depth, Wonder Fools and Theatre SAN have pulled off something quite miraculous.
