The Korean Werther – Process

The collaborators of the cultural section of Proceso, whose edition became monthly, publish in these pages, week by week, their critical columns (Art, Music, Theater, Cinema, Books).

MEXICO CITY (Process).- This is a musical filmed in front of a real audience: Goethe’s epistolary novel, The tribulations of young Wertherwhich he published in 1774, now adapted for the stage, scored by South Korean musicians, with a script very close to the original story.

Cho Gwang-hwa conductor Werther (Wertheraka; 2021, South Korea), a film that at first arouses curiosity, even a certain strangeness, but the work and performance of the singers, the solemn music, end up seducing the Western viewer, by now very experienced with the image of Korean culture promoted by TV series, musical groups, and good and bad movies, but always daring.

The story of the unfortunate love triangle, which Goethe based in part on his own story – a touchstone of European romanticism and which gave rise to so much to talk about and write about – has fallen into disuse; the musical Werther He dares to dramatize the story again, in a dense musical (composed by Minsun Jung), somewhat operatic, without any shame to exhibit those extreme emotions that at one time caused the “Werther” fever, from which Goethe himself ended. for denying

The challenge for the cast of Werther It is giving strength to a well-known story, more for its outcome than for its plot, with extreme emotions in an old-fashioned love game where one of the three must sacrifice himself so that the other two are happy; The beautiful Lotte (Jihye Lee) is engaged to marry Albert (Sanghyun Lee), a man eleven years older than her, but the young and passionate artist, Werther (Kyuhyun) falls madly in love (there is no other word) with her.

Kyuhyun – as the popular singer of the group Super Junior is known – has a tenor voice with a wonderful tone, at least on a commercial level, he dares to dramatize emotions with live tears, to exalt himself with a base, and that seems honest , of purity and naivety, as reflected in the confessions that Goethe’s character makes through his letters. What would pass as excessive, overacted, in a modernized version of Hollywood, suits well in this literal adaptation of the sensibility of the late 18th century.

The guilty pleasure of the viewer who allows himself to enjoy Werther grows, not because Kyuhyun is precisely a good actor, but because he gives himself to his character without any distance, almost suicidally.

This musical has something of a natural phenomenon: Werther It has been on the billboard discontinuously for more than 20 years, but what began almost as chamber music in a very distant representation of history, was transformed over the years, with different performers, music and plot, songs, or areas, more attached to the text, from German to Korean, until giving this product that is now launched on the international scene.

Of course, echoes of The Phantom of the Opera, the same one that Kyuhyun acted and sang not long ago; the choreographies, nothing that has not been seen in other American musicals, but which resonate echoes of the Russians of the 20th century, and the whole thing would be embarrassing if it were not for the fact that it really works as a spectacle, probably more for film buffs than for musicologists.