HARIBO KIMCHI
Edinburgh International Festival
★★★★★
“theatre at its most intelligent, empathetic, and raw, scorching with honesty and intimacy with every bite”
For just over an hour, this staggeringly inviting performance beckons its audience into a conventional late-night Korea snack bar or ‘pojangmacha’. Written, directed, and performed by Jaha Koo, Haribo Kimchi is a masterfully introspective burst of light, music, culture, and food.
Throughout Haribo Kimchi, we are poetically led through anecdotes of how to contend with making new roots, and the anger and shame ignited by experiences of cultural assimilation and racism. The piece presents a fantastical and careful blend of absurdism and raw realism, as singing eels come face to face which onstage mixology, and digitalised gummy bears lament a lack of peaceful solace. This is theatre at its most intelligent, empathetic, and raw, scorching with honesty and intimacy with every bite.
As the performance opens, we are treated to hypnotically powerful music and astounding visuals of Korean city nightlife. The camera passes over the immensity of skyscrapers and traverses streets bustling with culinary culture and the taste of Koo’s home. Eunkyung Jeong’s set dynamically supports Koo’s impressive sound and videography, as we watch projections transform into an intimate street-food venue. The realism of the set emboldens Koo’s personal storytelling style and allows him the ability to invite audience members to enjoy the delicate delights of his hospitality throughout the piece. As Koo prepares culinary treats tied with personal meaning, the rhythm of his pre-recorded soundscape sync beautifully with the live sizzling, chopping, and pouring of his makeshift eatery. The actor’s earnestness is transfixing and the production’s clever details are something to savour as every course is enjoyed.
As Haribo Kimchi progresses, we journey across countries and cuisines, and are allowed access into the small joys and heartbreaks of Koo’s world. This includes experiences of moving from South Korea to Europe and facing pungent racism. Each word of English and Korean dialogue lingers poetically, hovering above Koo as he prepares and shares fresh seaweed broth, and precisely mixes Somaek (a cocktail of beer and soju) for two guests who are asked to take a seat and make themselves feel welcome on the stage. Koo exudes an understated reassurance and warmth that takes firm root in his anecdotes and steadies the audience, interrogating the discomfort of shame and sharing what feeling at, and away, from home can do to the body.
Koo’s story about meeting a Korean doctor in Berlin is particularly moving, asking us to consider what can be done about feeling far from yourself and your background, and to think about who might be around the corner to dust you off. This story cherishes those who culturally connect with you in unexpected moments, “proudly” sharing photos with you as though you are family, or gifting ingredients to illicit belonging. This, as well as Koo’s anecdote surrounding his father’s need to uproot, make for especially emotive moments, which are supported by mesmerizingly detailed up-close visuals which encompass the stage and plunge the audience into a kinetic shift from scene to scene. Haribo Kimchi’s spectacular visuals are at their most powerful when they seep into the real world, slithering out from screens and into moving musical manifestos.
Ultimately, the performance seeks to explore how best to connect to other cultures and our own; succeeding at every turn. As Haribo Kimchi rounds off its tender exploration of cultural dislocation, both the piece’s absurdity and care for the micro break loose. We are treated to a tantalizingly peculiar finale which extends a literal hand and toast with the audience. As we just about prepare to head home, we are finally reminded in the most ridiculous way possible that “routes” can be “more important than roots”.
HARIBO KIMCHI
Studio Theatre | Edinburgh International Festival
Reviewed on 21st August 2026
by Molly Knox
Photography courtesy of the Company
