Rock ’n’ rolling pin

During the performance, a couple from the audience gets to play the role of newlyweds at the Nanta chefs' wedding feast. Provided to China Daily

The dynamic 'chefs'at Seoul's Nanta Theater combine muscle, acrobatics and martial arts to make some joyful noise. Mike Peters joins the drumming and the food fight.

My friend really thought I was kidding.

"Let me get this straight: We're going to sit in a theater and listen to people bang on pots and pans?" he asked.

"Well, more or less," I replied.

"And we're going to pay THEM so we can do that?"

"Well yes."

He took some convincing - especially when the cashier wanted the equivalent of $50 for each ticket, a vast sum compared to the inexpensive entertainments we tend to favor living in Beijing.

But even he was won over from the first rat-a-tat-tat, as five madcap performers with big, sharp knives took the stage to prepare a wedding feast, with kitchen-implement percussion from soup to nuts.

Think Blue Man Group meets Julia Child meets Jackie Chan. The non-verbal drumming show, with pots and pans producing every percussive sound from distant thunder to machine-gun fire, has become a must-see entertainment in Seoul since it began in 1997, and three theaters host several shows each day to satisfy new waves of tourists and locals.

"Nanta" literally means random drum-beats and figuratively means reckless punching. The show has won various awards and enough acclaim to launch several international road tours, including performances in China several years ago.

The storyline for this theater production isn't exactly Shakespeare:

The stage chefs report to work and unexpectedly learn they will have to prepare a wedding banquet by 6 pm. Plus, the restaurant manager installs his doofus nephew as head chef and demands that his staff train him on the spot.

But any lack of plot is more than made up for in energy. Mayhem ensues as the four chefs bang, juggle, and fight en route to creating a grand banquet.

Because it is based on samullori (traditional Korean percussions), the nearly wordless production is easy to follow for viewers of any age or nationality.

Nobody will fall asleep during this family-friendly show - and that's not just because of the merry cacophony that cutting boards, garbage cans, broomsticks, chopsticks and some fast-chopping kitchen knives can make.

The slapstick fun includes one angry chef accidentally hurling a pail of water at the audience (the big bucket turns out to be full of small, colorful nerf balls) and the wheeling out of a really big cake. Just when the drama of the big clock's inexorable march to 6 pm - dinner time! - starts to wear thin, the feast is ready and the male members of the cast peel off their shirts for a martial-arts finale complete with fire.

Who knew vegetable chopping could be so exciting?

(China Daily 11/14/2010 page16)