★★★★★

“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”.

ANGELS IN AMERICA

Edinburgh International Festival

★★★★

“As scenes melt over one another, actors bask in the glory of silence and the heated majesty of the play’s overlapping tensions”

Angels in America at the Edinburgh International Festival by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam is a miraculous production of Kushner’s magnum opus. Sprawling between the lives of characters contending with the AIDS crisis, politics of race, religion, and Reagan’s America, this Dutch translated performance buries deeply under the skin.

It is a rare treat to enjoy both parts of Angels in America in one sitting. Millennium Approaches digs deeply into its characterisation and beckons the audience to headfirst into fiery paranoia and radical storytelling. Perestroika offers, somehow, an even more compelling and electric conclusion, packed with gut-punches and blaze from every angle.

Admittedly, the placement of subtitle screens and attention-demanding action feels difficult to sink into, even as someone familiar with the plot and text. However, the production’s skill leads those familiar with the show into the groove of contending with Kushner’s gymnastic dialogue in another language. Though, I can imagine it being tough for some non-Dutch speakers who are unfamiliar with the text to get smoothly stuck into the show.

Soundtracked to Bowie, the sound design of the show creates brilliantly unique moments. ‘We Can Be Heroes’ and some selections from Bowie’s self-epitaph ‘Blackstar’ album make for the most impactful moments, adding an even darker humour and constructing a distinct sound world around the play. For the most part, the vision of a Bowie-centric soundscape pays off. Some Bowie songs do feel overused or incongruously loud, especially in Millenium Approaches. The lack of set and props, aside from a sound system, pulls the music closer into the action, and creates a striking emptiness which swallows a fracturing 1980s New York around it.

Although effective for many (more comedic) moments, the lack of props occasionally pulls the performance down, where visuals with books, paper, or telephones could be even stronger. I feel very split on the use of hand gestures over props to Costuming feels authentic but unfortunately half-baked- fully immersive one moment and leaving it up to the audience’s imagination the next. On balance, this is perhaps an allusion to the collapsing of the world around the characters, of a reality “falling apart”; but it feels half-realised. The effectiveness of projection gains momentum throughout the production. Starting with floods of shadowy businessmen in suits, and eventually progressing to angel monument and pastoral images, some projections work better than others to add a haunting texture to the minimalist staging.

Directed masterfully by Ivo van Hove, the cast are phenomenally sharp. As scenes melt over one another, actors bask in the glory of silence and the heated majesty of the play’s overlapping tensions. Jesse Mensah, playing Belize and Mr Lies, is a particularly engaging presence across the almost five-hour production, bringing even the most hallucinogenic tableaus into tender subdual. Prior, played by Eelco Smits also undertakes his role with standout charisma and poignance. Both Smits and have undeniable chemistry and comedic timing, eliciting laughs one moment and bolts of devastation the next. Often shining opposite Smits, Eefje Paddenburg, breathes a brilliant life into the character of Valium-addicted Harper, bringing a razor-sharp detail to the role and eliciting goosebumps across the language barrier.

Krisjan Schellingerhout is a moving Joe Pitt, offering a stellar performance packed with range as the character’s world ruptures around him. Frequently playing opposite Schellingerhout as Louis, Minne Koole, carries an aptly layered portrayal of the character tormented by his own betrayals.

Hans Kesting displays talented physicality and unshakeable ferocity across the marathon performance as merciless lawyer, Roy Cohn. Marieke Heebink has excellent chemistry with the ensemble as a multi-rolling actress, selling each character with an assured talent that lets the audience know it’s time to pay attention to what she is about to bring to the stage. Felix Schellekens, playing angel and nurse, rounds the cast off exceedingly well, with a superb duality of physicality and characterisation that offers electrically surreal theatre. As the angel “visits” Prior, madcap interactions are brilliantly executed with flare and creative thought.

Sizzling with knife-edge acting, this stripped back and precise, yet epic, performance of Angels in America will undoubtedly leave you wanting more, regardless of how long you have already been sat in the theatre.

Tag Archives: Edinburgh International Festival

HARIBO KIMCHI

★★★★★

Edinburgh International Festival

HARIBO KIMCHI

Edinburgh International Festival

★★★★★

“theatre at its most intelligent, empathetic, and raw, scorching with honesty and intimacy with every bite”

HARIBO KIMCHI

Studio Theatre | Edinburgh International Festival

Reviewed on 21st August 2026

by Molly Knox

Photography courtesy of the Company

HARIBO KIMCHI

HARIBO KIMCHI

HARIBO KIMCHI

ANGELS IN AMERICA

★★★★

Edinburgh International Festival

ANGELS IN AMERICA

Edinburgh International Festival

★★★★

“As scenes melt over one another, actors bask in the glory of silence and the heated majesty of the play’s overlapping tensions”