NEW YORK — Toward the end of "The Last Empress," the new Korean musical, Queen Min, in a duet with her son the crown prince, urges him to nurture his dreams, to grow "to be the strong pillar of the nation--and come out to meet the world in style!"
The controversial empress--part Evita, part Joan of Arc--is the central character in this sweeping, lavish production, which opens next Sunday in Century City at the Shubert Theater. And the exchange between Queen Min and her son reflects Korean history at a time, in 1895, when the isolationist Land of the Morning Calm was just waking up from its feudal sleep of five centuries to take its place among modern nations. The scene also parallels what this $10-million production, a rare Broadway-style Asian musical, is attempting to achieve: to demonstrate to the international musical-theater community what Koreans can do with the art form.
"We want to show the world that we have the capability of creating an artistic spectacle--singing, dancing, costumes and sets--which is a mixture of Korean music and Western production values," says Ho Jin Yun, the director of "The Last Empress" and the creative head of Arts Communications, or A-Com, the Seoul-based live-entertainment company he founded in 1993 and which is producing the musical. "We think now is a good time for us to see if we can establish a bridgehead on Broadway and then go all over the world," Yun says.
Yun's company of 50 singers and dancers (five of whom are Americans) wear more than 600 costumes in this show, which had its U.S. premiere last summer at Lincoln Center. Sung in Korean with English supertitles, the epic production played the New York State Theater for 13 performances to strong box office and good notices, and the New York Times called it "a magnificent musical--impressive by anyone's standards." The response was encouraging enough to warrant a return trip to the same theater last month, even though the initial engagement lost $1 million.
While the ratio of Asians to non-Asians in the audience was about 4 to 1 last year, Yun maintains that the numbers appear to have been more equally divided this time around. And he says that he is expecting another $500,000 loss this time (some say it could go over $1 million); yet he says that still represents an investment in the show's future. For the show's backers--a combination of private investors and corporate and government sponsors--the Los Angeles engagement is a huge leap in the show's struggle to establish itself as a franchise among touring mega-musicals.
