西洋오랑캐

I should probably put a picture of my lion that I always draw here, but I’m not going to. Yesterday Jinhui and I celebrated one year of being successfully married with a trip to the theater…to watch a musical. A musical called Lion King, or maybe it was The Lion King. Anyhow, I believe the last time I attended a musical was in middle school, and that time I was actually performing as opposed to simply being in the audience. Oh you didn’t know that? It’s true! In middle school I played a cop and a court stenographer in my school’s production of Hello Dolly! I even had a line. But I’m really off on a tangent here.

Back to the Lion King. I’m a rock guy so I can get away with, “This Band was awesome! They sounded like Billy Idol battling Louie Armstrong,” but somehow things like that don’t really work with musical theater. What does work is something like, “Lion King was totally awesome!” Even that doesn’t really convey how out of control the entire thing was.

Some of you out there might have seen this show in the US or China or even here in Korea, but for those of you that haven’t let me briefly describe it. They started with the plot of the cartoon, The Lion King. To that they added puppets, and dudes in elephant suits, and dancers, and some dudes in a mask that looked like some sort of alligator with ram horns that seriously popped up right in front of me when the show began. The entire thing was so over the top, I’m a little sad that photography was prohibited. But thanks to the internet there are a whole slew of pictures are up on Korea’s offical Lion King musical website.

The entire thing was nuts! I’ve seen Lion King probably 100 times at least, due to the fact that someone in my household (other than me) was obsessed with it in the early 90s (I’m not naming any names), but even still I was still totally stoked. I mean there were dudes in huge elephant costumes coming down the aisle next to me, and guys with birds on ropes that were swung out over the audience. It was outstanding! Also there were some child actors. Child actors normally bug the hell out of me, especially here. Every kid that gets put on a “drama” here in Korea sounds like a robot…even when they are playing characters other than robots, but these kids were different. They spoke like normal people, not that halting, “Hi. My. Name. Is. Simba. I. Swear. I. Am. Not. A. Robot…” kind of delivery that every other Korean child actor uses. Awesome!

And speaking of vocal deliveries, the way in which Mufasa and Scar were portrayed or perhaps just my interpretation of their portrayal seemed a little odd. Maybe I’ve lived here too long, maybe it was scripted that way in Korea, or maybe it was scripted that way everywhere, but those two dudes reminded me a lot of the actors in the various historical dramas that are always on TV here. It was also weird the way some of the lyrics were changed when translated to Korean. The song, “I Can’t Wait To Be King,” became, “멋진 왕 될거야!” (”I’ll Become An Awesome King”).

Even if you don’t understand Korean you should go check it out, since it just looks so awesome. The story is easy enough to follow especially if you’ve seen yourself some Lion King before. If you’ve never seen Lion King, rent the video but definately check out the musical. It was deluxe!

So after the show we went to a Chinese restaurant named Ho Lee Chow’s. Ho Lee Chow’s does American style Chinese food, so there’s General Tso’s Chicken but no 자장면. We ordered some set that came with two bowls of hot & sour soup, some spring rolls, Mongolian beef, a platter of fried rice, and some deal that was called Sichuan Special (it was meat, chicken, shrip, squid, and vegetables in some sort of sauce). This was allegedly a set designed to feed two people, but we ended up taking a lot home with us.

Following dinner we had wine and cheese and then called it a night. That about does it from here, I’m going to go now because I want to play the Lion King Super Nintendo game we had when I was a youth. Before I go, there’s one last thing: When we got off the bus near our apartment, we saw a girl with a hairstyle that looked just like a lion’s mane. Make of that what you will.