Hue Park was sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop in the spring of 2014 when “Everyday Robots,” an indie pop ballad by Damon Albarn, floated over the speakers: “We are everyday robots on our phones / In the process of getting home.”
What if, Park thought, there were a whole world filled with robots who looked just look humans?
The result: a one-act Korean-language musical about a pair of abandoned robots who fall in love in Seoul in 2064. The show, which Park wrote with Will Aronson, a former New York University classmate, found success with its premiere in Seoul in 2016, and five subsequent commercial productions there.
The New York Times critic Jesse Green, who saw an English-language production at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater in 2020, called it “charming” and “Broadway-ready.” Now that version will open at Broadway’s Belasco Theater on Nov. 12, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen.
The story is about two outcast helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and build a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence, and Park thinks it is especially relatable after the coronavirus pandemic. “People have become so comfortable staying alone in their rooms and connecting to each other through a screen,” he said in a recent interview in Midtown Manhattan.
Shortly after previews began last month, Park, 41, a former K-pop lyricist who wrote the show’s lyrics, and Aronson, 43, who wrote the music — both collaborated on the book — talked about their inspirations and the different approaches to developing the show’s Korean and English versions. In a separate video call, Criss, 37, and Shen, 24, discussed the challenges of playing robots who look like humans.
Here are five things to know.
The first draft was in English.
Initially, Aronson said, they wrote in English because his Korean — which he began learning in 2008, when he was hired to write the music for a Korean show — “was not as good as it is now.”
Park, who was born in South Korea, then wrote the Korean lyrics and translated the script for the musical’s premiere in Seoul. When it came time to create the English version, for the Alliance production, “we went back to the English one we already had,” he said.
Two versions, worlds apart.
Unlike in English-language musicals, the lyrics in Korean-language musicals do not rely on structural rhymes, Aronson said. “A lot of English lyrics are very specific, things you would actually say,” he added. “Korean lyrics are more like poetry.”
The English version of “Maybe Happy Ending” also spells out plot details more concretely, according to Park. He noted a scene in the Broadway production in which the former owners of the female robot appear as holograms and recount their relationship history. In the Korean version, which, unlike the Broadway iteration, has a six-piece orchestra onstage, the characters do not appear. Their back story is instead implied in a duet between a male cellist and a female violinist.
The actors have a unique challenge.
The script spells it out: Oliver (Criss) and Claire (Shen) are robots who look like humans (they are dressed like hipsters, circa 2010).
Criss’s robot is an older model, so he, Shen and the production’s director, Michael Arden, decided that he would be the more robotic of the two main characters. That allowed Criss to draw on his training in physical theater at the Accademia dell’Arte, the performing arts school in Arezzo, Italy.
“The fear for an actor on a stage is to be like a cartoon character,” said Criss, who cited Kabuki theater, vaudeville and silent-film-era comedians as inspirations for his character’s movements and expressions. “However, because of the construct of our show, which is extremely theatrical and heightened, the more you lean into that, I think the more effective the piece.”
As for Shen’s character, the group decided that, because she was a newer model, her movements would be nearly indistinguishable from a human’s.
“It was interesting to get to work in that middle ground, that gray area,” she said.
Japan’s hikikomori were an inspiration.
Aronson and Park had read about the hikikomori in Japan, which are extreme recluses — mostly young men — who hole up in a home for six months or more, often sequestering themselves in a single room and rarely engaging with the outside world.
“There’s less and less interaction with other people,” Aronson said. “We’re all becoming more like shut-ins, disconnected.”
It has a majority Asian American cast.
In addition to Criss, who is half Filipino, and Shen, who is Chinese and grew up in New Jersey, the two cast members who appear onstage are Dez Duron and Marcus Choi, who is Korean American.
“It’s exciting to have more variety on Broadway,” said Park, who mentioned recent shows like “KPOP” and the puppet-driven play “Life of Pi,” which featured many South Asian actors. “I hope ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ can contribute to that.”
The post A New Broadway Musical Asks: Can Robots Fall in Love? appeared first on New York Times.
