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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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"Jackie Chan meets Charlie Chaplin" in a high-energy martial-arts-based family spectacle that tells the story of three generations thwarting a home break-in. Click here for tickets. |
Body Blows and Slapstick, With a Side of Ham
*By JASON ZINOMAN
Published: October 8, 2007
The Union Square Theater is carving out a niche as a home for a kind of barely verbal foreign import that has become a standard feature of the Off Broadway menu. These high-energy spectacles — the offspring of hits like “Stomp” and “Blue Man Group” — are sometimes called events or experiences, and audiences are usually told that the shows are a sensation somewhere very far away.
This year it was “Be,” a rather loud headache from Israel featuring half-dressed actors leaping in the air, clowning around and banging on things. The new tenant is the lowbrow South Korean entertainment “Jump,” offering another band of half-dressed actors leaping and banging and clowning. There are differences, of course, but they aren’t much greater than those between the menus at McDonalds in Seoul and Tel Aviv.
“Jump,” which was first presented in 2003 and has since toured the world, is not without charms. It tries to be a kind of live-action Jackie Chan film. Wearing martial arts outfits, the cast of archetypes includes a blushing ingénue (Hee-jeong Hwang), a goofball uncle (Han-chang Lim) and a doddering old man (Woon-yong Lee) who just may be underplaying his athletic prowess. A sliver of a plot emerges from the series of sketches — something about a family’s home being burglarized — but it’s really incidental to the main attractions: comic mugging and elaborately choreographed fights.
Some of the performers, like Mr. Lee, are impressive gymnasts, flipping around the stage and displaying remarkable body control, seemingly defying several laws of physics. When the actors stick to the acrobatics, as in the rousing finale, featuring the cast members taking turns running up the sides of curved walls, the show has a certain kick.
The energy fizzles out, though, when the kicks and punches turn to comedy. With generous amounts of mugging, hackneyed physical humor and a weird fixation on the rear end, the creators of the show, including the director Chul-ki Choi, appear to be aiming for the toddler crowd. But all this hamming proves, among other things, the old cliché that a punch in the face translates much better than a joke.
"Jump" is playing at the Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, Manhattan; (212) 307-4100.
Click here to buy tickets.
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