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Still, even the award-winning theatre could not have planned
to open In-Sook Chappell's "P'yongyang" on the day its subject -
isolated and idiosyncratic North Korea - would grab global
headlines by announcing its first hydrogen bomb test.[L3N14Q2DH]
Chappell, born in South Korea and brought up in Britain, doesn't
directly touch on North Korea's nuclear tests. But she takes us
behind its regimented displays of military might into the
suffering of citizens who have lived through decades of
international sanctions, isolation and malnutrition.
She was inspired to write the play after visiting the eerie
Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and hearing
accounts from North Korean refugees of the starvation and brutal
treatment they had endured.
Founded in 1980, the Finborough Theatre in West London has
nurtured talents including actress Rachel Weisz and Laura Wade,
who shot to fame as the writer of Posh, which shone a spotlight
on Prime Minister David Cameron's decadent, privileged student
past.
To try to make her difficult subject accessible to a Western
audience, Chappell said she decided to root it in "a very simple
love story" between a hero and heroine wrenched apart by the
North Korean regime.
The Finborough Theatre typically rejects scripts based on
conventional love stories as too hackneyed, but it made an
exception for a play that uses a romance as a way into a deeper
political drama.
"I want people to be entertained. I want people to hear stories
they have not been told before. I want them to be moved, but I
guess I want them to question how this is allowed to continue,"
Chappell said.
It's a question behind the latest headlines as the world wonders
whether the huge explosive Pyongyang fired off really was an
H-bomb - the United States government and several experts doubt
that - and why it chose to hold an atomic test now.
(Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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