Small stages, foreign festivals, no shortcuts: A Korean musical's long and winding road to London
After years on small stages and the festival circuit, “You & It” is bringing its distinctly Korean story of grief and memory to audiences in Britain at London’s King’s Head Theatre.
A scene from the musical “You & It,” which began a six-week run at the King’s Head Theatre in London on Aug. 20EG MUSICAL COMPANY
Korea's biggest musical production houses — Seensee Company with “Nero,” ACOM with “Franz&Marie, and Theater Yeonwoo with its long-running hit “The Goddess Is Watching” — are all rolling into London this fall with new productions. But one small, self-described scrappy underdog company is already there: EG Musical Company, whose “You & It” has been running at Off West End's King's Head Theatre since Aug. 20.
The musical's winding road to London went through years of small stages and international festivals rather than taking a straight path from a major studio. Its creator made a deliberate bet against smoothing over what makes the show distinctly Korean, a choice now being tested in front of London audiences.
“You & It” is a two-hander chamber musical following a grieving widower in Daegu, North Gyeongsang, who has an AI robot built from his late wife's memory data. Whenever the robot shows even the slightest deviation from who she was, he resets it to make it identical again. Through that unsettling ritual, the musical explores what makes memory, love and human identity irreplaceable — asking whether recreating someone perfectly could ever really mean bringing them back.
Written by Oh Seo-eun and Q Lee, the show won the Daegu International Musical Festival's award for Best Original Musical in 2019, and briefly passed through Seoul's theater district before EG Musical Company pursued its overseas debut through a licensing deal in Taiwan in 2020, followed by a run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2024.
Though the plot bears distinctly Korean elements, its overseas versions do not stray from the original. In London, local actors play Korean characters on a set with traditional latticed paper doors, and Korean words like ajeossi, a term for an older man, and baduk, the Korean name for the board game Go, appear throughout the script.
“At first, I considered changing Bukseong-ro [a neighborhood in Daegu] to somewhere in London and giving the characters foreign names, but it felt wrong,” said Lee, who is also the head of EG Musical Company. “We decided to keep our own worldview intact. I don't think local audiences are interested because it's a 'K-musical' — I think there's just a lot of interest in original creative work there. It's probably not the exotic setting but the common denominators that come out of it — love, separation, memory — that resonate.”
Musical producer and writer Q LeeEG MUSICAL COMPANY
Lee said he drew inspiration from Sophia, the humanoid robot that made headlines in 2017 as the first robot to be granted citizenship.
“There are a lot of similar stories out there, but what matters is what kind of thematic consciousness you deliver through a story anyone can imagine,” he said. “The show is about cherishing someone you love but neglect because they're too close to you. I feel it's worthwhile when I hear that middle-aged men cried harder watching it than women did.”
In the show, the husband works in casting and foundry work, while his wife is a potter — a pairing Lee said he chose as a metaphor for the robot's reset ritual.
“With casting, once you make the mold, you can stamp out as many copies as you want — but with pottery, no matter how hard you try to make something the same, it always comes out a little different,” he said.
“I wanted to dissolve that question into the story: If you copy someone's memories into a mold, does it become the same person? The memories of loving someone live in the time you spent together in the past. It's a story about the uniqueness and dignity of human beings, who live on missing imperfect memories.”
Despite the challenges of localizing the show for a different culture and navigating an unfamiliar production system, Lee said he has pursued overseas markets aggressively because of the diversity they offer.
“It's not easy to tell a story about an ajumma [a middle-aged Korean woman] and an ajeossi like this in Daehak-ro,” he said. “The [British] production environment isn't bad, in that the audience base is broad and the range of subject matter is limitless.”
Daehak-ro is Seoul's main theater district, a neighborhood near Hyehwa Station in Jung District, central Seoul, packed with small and midsize stages that have long served as the center of Korea's musical and play scene.
Lee, who is from Daegu, studied composition at Daegu Arts University and musical theater at New York University. He admits he still hasn't adapted to “the grammar of Daehak-ro” — the entry barrier posed by an ecosystem centered on fan-driven shows, where an actor's own fandom fills the seats.
“I could match Seoul's trend grammar, but one of the basic qualities of a creator is to make the story they want to tell,” he said. “Good platforms are emerging in the regions, too, so I hope regional creators will confidently find material close to home and make all kinds of stories.”
A scene from musical “You & It,” which began a six-week run at the King’s Head Theatre in London on Aug. 20EG MUSICAL COMPANY
The unfamiliar business side has gotten easier, too, abroad. “Two years ago, at our showcase, I remember the other side of the table suddenly looking like the villain the moment an English-language contract came out,” he said, referring to how unfamiliar the terms and negotiating process felt at the time. “But now, AI tells you all the industry statistics, so there's nothing to be afraid of. The idea that AI can replace everything except human beings — that's also what 'You & It' is about.”
In London, “You & It” has been vetted by critics through two showcases and a trial run at the Edinburgh Fringe; now it faces the test of profitability. The King's Head Theatre — a storied venue with a loyal local audience — selected the show as one of four handpicked productions for its second half of the year. The show is filling more than 60 percent of seats each night.
“Strictly speaking, this isn't the West End yet,” he said. “You need something like 400 to 500 seats to call it the West End — this year, most Korean productions are being tested at Off West End venues seating around 250. We got here because of good reviews at Edinburgh two years ago, and now we need to head toward an actual long run in the West End.”
But as a producer, Lee still carries a Daehak-ro long run as unfinished business.
“On Broadway, they say a 'musical is magical,' and I had experiences there beyond what I imagined — but Daehak-ro tends to pursue depth of storytelling more,” he said. “I want to add magic on top of that. I want to give audiences moments of awe, like the chandelier in 'The Phantom of the Opera' or the helicopter in 'Miss Saigon.'”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
