SYNOPSIS

Giovanni is a boy who lost his sight in a childhood accident and has lived in quiet isolation ever since. After his father’s disappearance years earlier, he grows up alone, supporting himself with a part-time job producing Braille books while continuing his schooling. He is often mocked by classmates, especially Zanelli, and endures his days without protest. Yet beneath his withdrawn exterior, Giovanni still carries a fragile sense of hope and a longing for companionship that has never completely faded.

Campanella was once Giovanni’s closest childhood friend, but the two were no longer together, and Giovanni’s loneliness deepened in his absence. On the day of the annual Galaxy Festival, Campanella suddenly reappears and gently invites Giovanni to go with him. Giovanni hesitates, weighed down by habit and self-doubt, but ultimately changes his mind, moved by the faint hope that something might finally be different.

At the festival grounds, Giovanni searches for Campanella among the crowds. People ridicule him for his blindness and shove past him as if he does not belong. Just as he finally reaches Campanella and the two begin to walk together, a blinding flash of light fills the sky, and Giovanni loses consciousness.

He awakens aboard the Galactic Railroad 999, a mysterious train traveling through the Milky Way toward its final destination, the Southern Cross. The chief conductor introduces himself as Campanello, a figure who closely resembles Campanella but wears a uniform and carries himself with formal authority. As the journey continues, Giovanni encounters other figures who also resemble Campanella—Campanelli, Campanelius, and others—each appearing in different attire and roles depending on the star or constellation they inhabit. Though their names, clothes, and functions differ, they are all played by the same actor, each carrying a fragment of the same presence. Giovanni is unsettled by this repetition, sensing both familiarity and distance in their faces.

As the train passes through the Swan constellation, Giovanni recalls the story of Phaethon, the son of Apollo, who fell into a river after losing control of the sun chariot. A grieving figure transforms into a swan in search of the lost child, and the swan ultimately becomes a constellation. Giovanni feels a quiet shock of recognition. He cannot remember exactly when, but he knows he has heard this story before—from his father.

The train moves on to the Lyre constellation, where Campanelius recounts the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus descends into the underworld to reclaim his beloved wife but loses her forever when he turns back to look at her. His lyre, born of love and loss, is lifted into the stars. Giovanni is deeply shaken. The words, the rhythm of the story, even the pauses feel unmistakably familiar. He begins to suspect that these are the same stories his father once told him long ago, when he was still a child listening in the dark.

As the train approaches Scorpius and moves toward the Southern Cross, Giovanni’s unease intensifies. Campanella appears again and asks Giovanni to exchange coats. Giovanni’s coat, sewn from sea otter fur, was made by his father Pierre, once a hunter. A mysterious voice tells Giovanni that Pierre is not the noble lord of the Southern Cross, but a fugitive—an unsettling contradiction that throws Giovanni into confusion and fear. Realizing that something fundamental no longer aligns, Giovanni abruptly disembarks from the train.

This moment marks a rupture in the journey. The guiding figure Giovanni has trusted is no longer simply a companion or conductor, but begins to reveal a deeper truth. Campanella is no longer separate from Pierre; he is an embodiment of Giovanni’s father, shaped by memory, guilt, and longing. The railroad has not been carrying Giovanni toward a mythic ruler’s domain, but toward the place where he has confined his father within himself.

From there, Giovanni travels alone to the Island of Loss. Crossing the sea in a small sailboat, he refuses to turn back despite fear and the echoing voices of ridicule. On the island, he finally reunites with Pierre. Giovanni confesses that it was he who imprisoned his father there, unable to face the truth of his death. Through their reunion, the fragmented figures of Campanella resolve into a single presence, and Giovanni is freed from the burden of denial.

Only then does Giovanni fully confront the truth he has buried: his father did not simply disappear. He drowned while saving Giovanni from an accident seven years earlier. Unable to face that loss, Giovanni sealed the memory away, imprisoning his father on the Island of Loss. The railroad journey itself is revealed as a reflection of Giovanni’s long refusal to accept reality.

When Giovanni awakens, he is back in the real world. Nothing outwardly has changed. He is still blind, still working, still attending school. But inwardly, everything is different. His father now lives not in denial or guilt, but in memory. Carrying sorrow, hope, and the stars together, Giovanni moves forward, no longer alone.

REVIEW

This was a two-actor production: one performer played Giovanni while also voicing Zanelli, and the other portrayed Campanella along with all remaining characters. When voicing Zanelli, the actor playing Giovanni turned away and altered his tone, making the bully’s presence convincingly felt despite the absence of a physical body. The Campanella actor shifted costumes and vocal color to embody characters of different ages, temperaments, and even genders.

The stage consisted of only four square boxes and one long rectangular platform, used flexibly as chairs, steps, and elevated spaces. The LED backdrop functioned as a visual canvas, transforming from an Italian village into constellations and cosmic landscapes. The result was a production that felt far larger than its scale, and its popularity among repeat audiences owes much to this visual richness and the illusion of a much larger cast.

While the musical draws from Kenji Miyazawa’s novel, it introduces several deliberate changes. Giovanni is reimagined as blind following a childhood accident, living alone after his father’s disappearance, and Campanella becomes an imaginary or internalized guide rather than a single lost friend. The story centers on the galactic train journey toward the Southern Cross, where Giovanni ultimately confronts his father and overcomes long-buried fear and guilt.

The production feels closer to a hybrid of play and musical than a conventional sung-through work. Spoken dialogue plays a crucial role in shaping character transitions and comic relief. The score is consistently strong and well balanced, supporting the drama without overwhelming it, and the two actors harmonize effectively throughout.

The show was staged as a licensed Mandarin-language production in Shanghai in 2023, reflecting how Korean original musicals are increasingly positioned for both domestic and international audiences through universal themes. Cultural adaptation here is handled with restraint. Giovanni is identified as a boy from a small Italian village, and while the Italian naming system is not always rigorously applied, the intent is clear.

Casting Campanella as a gender-free role could have resolved many of the conceptual tensions created by the multiple name variations—Campanella, Campanello, Campanelli, Campanellu, Campanelius. Once Campanella is no longer a concrete childhood friend but a guiding presence, there is little reason for that presence to remain male. Removing gender specificity could have strengthened the idea of Campanella as memory, voice, or conscience rather than a fixed body. Alternatively, if the production wished to retain a male performer, consolidating the names around Campanello—suggesting a bell or guide—might have clarified function over identity.

Giovanni’s blindness is one of the adaptation’s most thoughtful choices. He cannot see in waking life, but in the dream journey he sees the universe. This is not a metaphor layered onto the story—it is the story. The LED galaxies, constellations, birds, beaches, and starlight are not decorative but essential, marking the threshold between reality and the railroad. In this way, the musical does not misread Miyazawa so much as translate his inner vision into theatrical language.

Likewise, transforming Campanella from a lost friend into a guide is a conscious and coherent shift. By multiplying Campanella into various figures, the production turns him into a function rather than a person—someone who appears wherever guidance is needed, dressed for each constellation and speaking in a voice Giovanni recognizes. Campanella is not traveling with Giovanni; he is leading him.

Seen this way, the adaptation is highly intentional, prioritizing visual storytelling and symbolic clarity over literary ambiguity. Giovanni’s name itself reinforces this reading. Giovanni is the Italian form of John, a figure traditionally associated with vision, revelation, and witnessing what others cannot see. Naming a blind boy Giovanni, who alone is allowed to see the cosmos in a dream, resonates naturally with that tradition.

The audience response was immediate and engaged, suggesting a high proportion of repeat attendees—something more commonly felt in Daehangno theatres than in larger venues. This sustained rapport between performers and audience helps explain the show’s steady popularity and its regular returns since 2021, despite its modest scale.