KPOP Broadway Reviews

With mega-watt set design, exquisite choreography, a show-within-a-show storyline and a score that sounds more like a Spotify playlist than a conventional musical's tunes, 'KPOP' is elegant, energetic, and exceptional. It's a cleverly playful dramedy wrapped around a concert and stuffed inside the enigma of what it means to want fame - badly - then get it, with all its risks and losses spilled onto the stage.

If you are a fan of K-pop, KPOP The Musical is a can’t-miss show. If you have an interest in Broadway and the future of the theatre industry at large, KPOP is a must see, shining star, of what is possible. It is not difficult to look around at other audience members and see fans having the time of their life. KPOP has a crowd. You should be in it.

nifer Weber’s formula-based though clever pop-and-bop choreography―with a stylistic assist from assistant choreographer MJ Choi―is as fun and catchy as anything Britney Spears ever performed. Likewise, Helen Park’s and Max Vernon’s evocative score is full of bangers that also comment on the action―much like John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret. And Jiyoun Chang’s lighting, Mia M. and Neal’s hair and wigs, Joe Dulude II and Suki Tsujimoto, and Peter Fitzgerald and Andrew Keister’s make-up designs must be applauded for converting the show into an actual pop concert. But hats off to director Teddy Bergman for doing the impossible―modulating each show-stopping element so that Kim’s wonderful, multilingual book never loses focus. Though KPOP feels fresh, there is a precedent for what it has accomplished. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II essentially laid out the blueprint when they revolutionized musical theatre in 1927 with Show Boat―another backstage drama and the first Broadway musical to seamlessly integrate dialogue, music, and dance in the service of plot. Almost one century later, it is a pleasure to see this glorious cast of Pan-Asian performers reclaim and elevate the form. If this is the future of Broadway, please consider me a rabid and reinvigorated stan.

The concert portions of the evening are a cotton-candy delight. Helen Park and Max Vernon have written a handful of pulsing K-pop gems that feel like they'd fit right into a Seoul top 40 playlist, with pulsing beats, solo vocal runs, tight harmonies and occasional interjections of rap. The talented cast deliver the goods, aided by Jennifer Weber's crisp and energetic choreography, Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi's flashy costumes, Jiyoun Chang's dramatic lighting and Gabriel Hainer Evansohn's sleek scenic design.

Beyond the echo-chamber narrative, there's much to like. There's an irresistible cast of performers - 18 of them are making Broadway debuts - and attention-getting work by the design team that delivers the goods and then some.

The 2017 Off-Broadway incarnation of the new musical KPOP opened at a venue just a few blocks away from its current Broadway home at the Circle in the Square. But despite the short distance, much of the show’s impact has been lost along the way. The original production was immersive, with segments of the audience moving from one location to another to witness the aching workloads and personal conflicts of young Korean performers to achieve stardom under the guidance of an ambitious record label. That aspect has been necessarily and understandably lost in the show’s transition to a traditional Broadway theater, albeit the only one featuring in-the-round seating. Unfortunately, much of what made the earlier production interesting has been discarded as well, resulting in a more sanitized, less thematically interesting experience that mainly relies on the propulsive energy of its many musical numbers to fuel the evening. The end result provides a reasonably enjoyable facsimile of K-Pop music, but it’s certainly not the same KPOP.

There is an ecstatic upbeat tempo to “KPOP.” Eighteen of the aforementioned 22-person ensemble makes their Broadway debut here, and even the worst of scripts cannot stop them from having a great time. Too much love and hard work envelops Bergman’s stage to not bop your head to the music or mimic dance moves from your seat. While discrepancies riddle the musical’s book and erase all potential for a transformative time, I’d instead advise to venture out in pursuit of an entertaining one. You’ll find that at “KPOP.”

KPOP doesn't stint on concert-style numbers, and that's where this production shines. Directed by Teddy Bergman, the well-drilled young cast performs Helen Park and Max Vernon's exuberant pastiche songs (several of which are new to this version of the show) with panache, executing Jennifer Weber's rigorous choreography with zippy synchronized swagger and verve. Their costumes, by Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi, are spectacular-wild hybrids of patterns, fabrics, textures and international influences-and the performances are appropriately heightened by the show's lighting (by Jiyoun Chang), sound (by Peter Fitzgerald and Andrew Keister) and multipaneled set (by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn).

Two distinct strands emerge during KPOP. One is an amped-up music and dancing extravaganza, which when it really takes light is visually and aurally exciting (the boy band's 'Shake It' is a total thriller near the end). Leaning into its concert heart, the show relies on the smooth execution of its songs (Helen Park and Max Vernon), alongside excellent choreography (Jennifer Weber), lighting (Jiyoun Chang), sound design (Peter Fitzgerald and Andrew Keister), projections (Peter Nigrini), and costumes (Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi).

I loved “KPOP” when I saw it five years ago Off Broadway, but the “KPOP” on Broadway is not the same show as the one in 2017, even though it has the same title, the same book writer and songwriters (and many of the same songs), the same director and choreographer, even the same storylines. It’s still exciting, sometimes thrilling — but it’s a packaged entertainment rather than an adventure in theater.

For this reason–and I can't believe I am writing this–I would have preferred a K-pop revue without the strained narratives. In the concert numbers, the performers are electrifying, and they elicit earned shrieks, squeals, and thunderous applause from the notably young and Asian audience members. Helen Park's and Max Vernon's songs are silly confections that thankfully are accompanied by loud electronic music, so you don't end up with an ear worm consisting of a lyric like, 'This is my Korea/ This is my story-a/ A new category-a/ To make you dance and clap your hands.' Wearing Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi's appropriately gaudy, garish, and fabulous costumes, which include glittering bodysuits, playful dominatrix attire, faux military uniforms, MwE, RTMIS, and F8 put on a sensational show, particularly in the 15-minute finale. Jennifer Weber's thrilling choreography incorporates all the shakes, pops and thrusts one associates with the genre. KPOP will not go down in the Broadway annals as a groundbreaking, or even a very good, musical. But when the company sings the final song, 'Blast Off,' you may realize that you're having too much fun to notice–or care.

There’s a lot in the musical KPOP that makes for a successful show, including a winning ensemble, melodies that sneak into your ears and stay there, and rhythm-perfect choreography. But it has a curious inertia. It lacks drama. Not in the sense of tension between its characters—there’s plenty of bickering to observe between the characters at the musical’s fictional K-pop label as they prepare for a big American showcase—but in the sense of a thrust, an arc, propulsion. It feels as if the show has rushed out into the open water of Broadway and then gotten stuck, like a ship unable to catch the wind.

In its remaking for Broadway I wish 'KPOP' had preserved more moments like that: moments that allow you to consider what the excitement of K-pop (for those who feel it) and the expressiveness of American musical theater (likewise) can profitably say to each other. Both have their fans and no doubt their glories, as well as their limitations. But it seems to me that in introducing the two, a good place to have met would have been, well, halfway. 'KPOP' still has far to go to get there.

And while Circle in the Square proves to be an excellent space for the show’s mostly concert-like format – indeed, the last 15 minutes of the show is nothing but a concert – “KPOP” would have benefitted by being in a space that allowed the audience to get up, dance or otherwise feel more involved in the onstage goings-on. Indeed, director Teddy Bergman too often places the numbers towards the back of the thrust stage, which seems doubly foolish given the natural intimacy of the theater. Still, the exuberance of that final section will leave almost everyone to wonder why the show needed a book, and not just a quick set-up. Moreover, if it had to have a book, couldn’t one have been created that was less hackneyed, dull and even preposterous than the one penned by Jason Kim?