Kitchen Sink

Dramas—With a Difference
By Mike Salinas

Actors who want to be au courant may want to take another look at the line on their resumes listing special skills. The next big thing to include may be cooking.

For theatregoing gourmets who simply cannot wait that long for a show that cooks, they may prefer something a little more, well, home-cooked, such as "Chicks Cook."
That production, the brainchild of Gecko Saccomanno and Eve Prince, combines video performances, poetry, fashion, and food from caviar to flaming desserts, served to the audience. Saccomanno told Back Stage that the very things about cooking that she loves so much also make it theatrical, including its unpredictability, its constrained time frame, and its ability to be exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. However, it is not the kind of show that she and Prince—or their special guests, such as Patty Chang, Gabrielle from the House of St. Eve, Missy Galore, Kathrine Cronis, and Misa Martin—can perform eight times a week. Rather, it is something that fans are willing to wait weeks to experience.

The next performance of "Chicks Cook" will be this Sun., July 29 at Luvyplex, located at 353 Broadway (at Leonard). The theme for that edition of "Chicks Cook" (subtitled "Food with an Attitude") is "Alice in Wonderland."

Another Venue, Another Menu
A troupe from South Korea will hit American shores this season with a musical extravaganza called "Cookin’," which press reports describe as a sort of "Iron Chef: The Musical." The show, which is on an extended American tour, was depicted thusly in its promotional material when it played in Austin, Texas: "Four crazy chefs in a Korean kitchen have an elaborate meal to prepare with little time. Struggling to overcome rivalries and other obstacles, they take advantage of every utensil in the kitchen in order to drum, juggle, fight, skip, beat, and stir their way through the day’s cooking schedule, producing an intensely energetic range of percussive rhythms." One of Korea’s hottest theatrical music sensations, "Cookin’" (or, as it’s alternately known, "Nanta") promises a blend of "Stomp!" and the kind of spectacle seen in Japanese steakhouses—and more.
According to the show’s promotional materials, Cookin’ is produced by Seung Whan Song, a matinee idol star of the Korean soap operas "My Sister’s Mirror" and "Men of the Bath House." Song conceived the idea for the culinary hit in 1997, inspired by the childhood memories of his mother and father working in the kitchen. An instant hit in Korea, it has played to more than 300,000 theatre-goers worldwide, from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (home of such popular alternative entertainment as "Puppetry of the Penis") to Walt Disney World (where, it must be said, "Puppetry" will probably never play, but audiences were dazzled by "Cookin’").
The musical rhythms of "Cookin’" are inspired by traditional percussion and samulnori music, which is a modern form of traditional Korean music in which special drums and gongs are beaten rapidly, reportedly developed thousands of years ago by farmers who used its rhythmic qualities to ease the hardship of intensive labor and to encourage unity among the workers; in the show it adds a fervor to such disparate elements as mask dance and Oriental martial arts, plus (or so it promises) the Marx Brothers and B-movies.
Purists who sniff that "Cookin’" isn’t really theatre might to well to consider that it was directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, the Tony-nominated choreographer and director of "Swing!" The creative consultant is Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the associate choreographer of the Broadway production of "High Society," as well as director and choreographer of "Radio Gals," and choreographer of "The Loman Family Picnic" and Maltby and Shire’s "Closer Than Ever."
PMC America and Broadway Asia Company hope to bring "Cookin’" to New York in 2001.