Bibap – Bibimbap, the Musical

Jump and Nanta are two successful performances you can enjoy without knowing any Korean. When my school was offering free tickets for Bibap, of course I said yes. This is a performance about Bibimbap, which happens to be my favorite Korean dish. The description sounded a bit like Nanta too.

Bibimbap isn’t made until the finale though and they do several other dishes like Japanese sushi, Chinese chicken noodles and Italian pizza, probably to satisfy the various tourist groups. Unlike Nanta, there is no story. They just do dish after dish.

The other difference is, that Bibap uses two human beatboxes who make almost all of the sounds (sadly including the overdone flatulence ones). There are eight people on stage, two play the chefs who have a bit of a rivalry going on. I thought that most of the gags were not very good and wished they would have done more intense fun cooking. They do some break dance moves and a few songs and of course they drag a few people out of the audience onto the stage. After Bibimbap is finished, the beatbox and breakdance members of the ensemble show their skills.

Overall, I liked Nanta much better. Some parts of Bibap were great (like the fish dreaming sequence), while others could be improved.