SYNOPSIS

The performance opens by explaining the double meaning of its title. Guito can be written as 龜兎, meaning “Terrapin and Rabbit,” or as 歸土, meaning “Return to One’s Home.” The audience is then welcomed to the performance, with “Welcome to Guito” displayed in the surtitles on the two side screens.


Act I

Guito begins where the traditional pansori Sugungga ends. Tobu, the father rabbit, returns to his home on land riding on the Terrapin’s back. As soon as they arrive, Tobu strikes the Terrapin on the forehead and laughs at him for believing that any animal could remove its liver and leave it somewhere else. The Terrapin realizes that he has been fooled and lunges at Tobu, but falls onto his back and struggles helplessly while Tobu disappears.

Tobu is about to enjoy an emotional reunion with his wife, Tomo, and their son, Toja, when a hawk suddenly swoops down, snatches him away, and eats him. Soon afterward, a hunter appears and shoots Tomo. Having lost both parents before his eyes, Toja becomes disillusioned with both the sky and the land. He decides to search for another world free from the samjae and pallan that plague life on land.

In the production, the three disasters of samjae are described as natural disasters from the sky, disasters arising from the earth, and disasters caused by humans. Pallan refers to the eight sufferings that a weak animal such as a rabbit must endure because of stronger animals and a hostile environment. Determined to find a world beyond the sky and the land, Toja sets out for the sea. Tonyeo appears and asks whether he intends to leave her behind as well, but Toja does not hesitate in his decision to go.

The Terrapin’s wife prays for her husband’s safe return and vows to remain faithful to him. Her resolve does not last long. When Namsaengi the Webfoot Tortoise appears and seduces her, she gives in to him. Meanwhile, the Terrapin, unable to return to the Underwater Palace without a rabbit, wanders through the distant mountains in search of another one who can save the Dragon King.

In the Underwater Palace, the Dragon King waits impatiently for the Terrapin. He becomes irritable and begins to suspect that the Terrapin may have betrayed him. The Webfoot Octopus, however, believes that the Dragon King’s tyranny is doing no good for the underwater kingdom.

The Terrapin’s wife and the Terrapin’s mother offer to entertain the anxious Dragon King with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies after being bitten by a snake, and Hades agrees to let Orpheus take her back to the living world. Unable to trust that Eurydice is truly following him, Orpheus looks back and loses her to the underworld forever.

The Dragon King asks why they have suddenly told him this story. They explain that its lesson is to trust the Terrapin instead of doubting him. Easily swayed, the Dragon King accepts their argument and decides once again to believe that the Terrapin will return.

On his way to the sea, Toja meets a seagull. He explains that he has lost faith in both the sky and the land and wants to live underwater. The seagull tells him that land animals and sea creatures have different internal organs, so a rabbit cannot survive in the sea.

Toja then meets the Terrapin. When Toja says that he wants to go beneath the sea, the Terrapin’s eyes light up. Tonyeo arrives and declares that she will go with Toja. Delighted to have found two rabbits at once, the Terrapin calls it “two rabbits with one strike” and invites them both to come with him.

Toja and Tonyeo ride on the Terrapin’s back across the rolling sea. They descend beneath the water, pass through the Crystal Gate, and finally enter the Underwater Palace. The way the sea creatures stare at the two rabbits, however, immediately suggests that something is wrong.


Act II

The Underwater Palace is nothing like the peaceful new world Toja and Tonyeo imagined. Fish with bloodshot eyes surround them, and the Dragon King appears among his subjects. The Terrapin explains that a renowned physician prescribed a rabbit’s liver as the only cure for the Dragon King’s illness. Looking at Toja, the Dragon King remarks that he does not resemble the rabbit who came before him.

Thinking quickly, Toja insists that he is not a rabbit. First he claims to be a dog, then an ox, and finally a horse. Each attempt fails when he is told that all these land animals can also be eaten or sold in the underwater kingdom.
The Terrapin urges them to kill the rabbit immediately so that the Dragon King can eat the liver while it is still warm. The Webfoot Octopus intervenes, arguing that the two rabbits must be exhausted and hungry after their long journey. He suggests feeding them well for a day before removing their livers.

Toja builds on the suggestion. He lists various fish dishes suited to spring, summer, autumn, and winter, explaining that good food has its proper season. He then describes the liver as a vital organ involved in processing red blood cells, breaking down proteins, metabolizing amino acids, and processing bilirubin. Since he and Tonyeo are not currently in good physical condition, he argues, their livers would have little medicinal value. Convinced by this explanation, the Dragon King orders that the rabbits be fed well for a day. Their immediate execution is postponed, but they are locked in the palace prison.

The Webfoot Octopus visits them in their cell. He admits that it is not simply that he wants to save the rabbits: he does not want the Dragon King to recover. Toja and Tonyeo do not trust him at first, but the Webfoot Octopus explains that the Dragon King must step down if the underwater kingdom is ever to improve.

When Toja says that he came to the Underwater Palace to escape the pallan of life on land, the Webfoot Octopus proposes a plan. He will buy them time before the Dragon King, while Toja and Tonyeo tell the sea creatures about the sufferings they endured on land. He believes the underwater subjects will understand because they have suffered in much the same way.

The following day, Toja and Tonyeo are brought before the Dragon King. The Terrapin orders the executioner, an electric eel, to embrace the two rabbits and electrocute them. The electric eel announces that the generators in both of her arms are fully charged and that she is ready to embrace them with 850 volts.

The Webfoot Octopus argues that the condemned rabbits should at least be allowed to give their last words. The Dragon King orders them to keep their remarks short, while the Webfoot Octopus tells them to make the story long.
Toja and Tonyeo begin describing the sufferings they experienced on land. They tell how Toja’s father was eaten by a hawk and his mother was shot by a hunter. The sea creatures respond that their own parents were killed in similar ways and realize that suffering in the sea is no different from suffering on land.

When Toja and Tonyeo ask members of the crowd to play their parents in a reenactment, everyone raises a hand and eagerly joins the performance. Alarmed that the mood is turning against him, the Dragon King tries to stop the story and proceed with the execution.

The electric eel also begins to hesitate. She is a freshwater fish who was brought to the sea to work as an executioner, and Toja’s story reminds her of similar hardships in her own life. By the time Toja and Tonyeo have described all eight sufferings, even the Dragon King begins to waver. Toja then announces that there is now one more: the ninth suffering is depression.

The Terrapin again urges the electric eel to embrace Toja and Tonyeo together and kill “two rabbits with one strike.” When she sits down and refuses to act, the Dragon King tries to pull her to her feet. He receives an electric shock and collapses. Horrified, the electric eel shakes him to see whether he is still alive, accidentally electrocuting him a second time.

Believing the Dragon King to be dead, the subjects, the Webfoot Octopus, and even the Terrapin celebrate and dance. The Dragon King, however, suddenly belches and wakes up. Brought to his senses by the two electric shocks, he apologizes to his subjects, Toja, and Tonyeo. He admits that he made his people suffer in order to build his new Underwater Palace and tried to prolong his own life even at the cost of another creature’s life.

Toja and Tonyeo ride on the Terrapin’s back and return to their home on land. Grandma Rabbit says that they live out their natural lifespans and, in old age, are invited by the Moon God to live in the Moon Palace. The Dragon King then reappears and says that there is really no need to know what eventually became of them. With that, the story ends.


REVIEW

The stage sloped upward toward the back. At its center was an 8-by-8-meter LED floor that could sink below stage level or rise approximately 40 centimeters above it. The slope allowed the audience to see the changing images on the floor, although the full effect would probably be clearer from the second tier.

A wide horizontal LED screen measuring 14 by 3 meters stretched across the rear of the stage. It moved up and down with each scene. The screen rose to open an entrance beneath it and descended again to show the landscape.

The entire stage was covered with narrow lengths of unpainted timber laid closely together, making it resemble a vast unfinished wooden floor. The curves, slopes, and ramps used by the performers were all made from the same material.

Before the performance began, the musicians entered in a single line along the aisle in front of the orchestra seating. Dressed in off-white hanbok, they greeted the audience before taking their places. Although they all played traditional Korean instruments, I sometimes had the illusion that I was hearing a flute, guitar, or viola. I looked toward the orchestra several times to see who was making those sounds, but the angle from my seat made it difficult to see which musician was playing which instrument.

From the first entrance of the Terrapin and Tobu, I liked the way the performers represented the movements of the animals. The rabbits hopped on two feet with their hands folded against their chests. It was a simple gesture, but it immediately made them look like rabbits. The Terrapin walked with his neck stretching forward while pushing his hips backward. The movement looked quite difficult to perform, but it worked very well.

The flying creatures spread open the fans in both hands to form wings. When the performers ran onto the stage holding them aloft, they really did seem like hawks or seagulls flying in. The Electric Eel wore an LED scarf around her neck, which lit up whenever electricity passed through her. When all the rabbit relatives brought their hands together and hopped through a group dance, it was believable that they were all rabbits.

Tobu and Tomo are killed almost as soon as they are reunited with their son: a hawk carries off Tobu, and a hunter shoots Tomo. Toja is suddenly left alone, so it seems only natural that he would despair of the world he knows and set out to find another one. The story itself was bleak, but the scenes and singing were full of earthy humor.

When Tobu was seized by the hawk and carried into the sky, the production represented his death with a rabbit puppet suspended from the end of a long pole, with a ring above its head to show that he was dead. The audience seemed uncertain for a moment whether to laugh or feel sad. Then Toja began hopping around while carrying the pole with the dead rabbit puppet, and everyone ended up laughing.

The production described samjae as three kinds of disaster: those caused by the sky, the earth, and human beings. The Eight Sufferings were hunger, thirst, cold, heat, water, fire, blades, and warfare. Toja leaves for the Underwater Palace in search of a world without these Three Disasters and Eight Sufferings.

Whenever the story seemed in danger of slowing down, another joke appeared and drew the audience back in. There was the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, introduced as an ancient Greek tale; a line from Korea’s Liberation Day Song, “Let us touch the soil again; even the sea dances”; Cho Yong-pil’s “Tears fall even while I smile”; and Leenalchi’s 〈Tiger Is Coming〉. Recognizing these familiar songs and stories was part of the fun.

When the Dragon King tries to have Toja and Tonyeo executed by the Electric Eel, the production also draws on the poem recited by the royal secret inspector Yi Mong-ryong in Chunhyangga to condemn the tyranny of Byeon Hak-do:

“The fine wine in the golden goblet is the blood of a thousand people, and the delicacies on the jade plate are the fat of ten thousand. As the candle wax falls, so do the people’s tears; where the singing rises high, the people’s cries of resentment rise even higher.”

I do not know pansori particularly well, but even I recognized the passage. It was used brilliantly here to connect Byeon Hak-do’s tyranny with that of the Dragon King.

Toja’s eyes light up when the Terrapin tells him about the Underwater Palace, and he says that he will go there to find a “new job.” The Terrapin, apparently unfamiliar with the English word, asks what he means. Toja replies, “Job, jap—I’ll even take jap-il,” using the English word job to make a pun on the Korean word for odd jobs. Wordplay like this continued almost without pause throughout the performance.

Nearly all the animals in the story were creatures that humans could eat. Their greatest suffering was therefore probably being caught in enormous numbers by people. There were stories of fish taken by pair trawling and other fishing methods, as well as Pacific saury, croaker, moray eel, and the Webfoot Octopus grilled after being coated in gochujang. Their stories were pitiful. I laughed along with everyone else, and felt a little guilty for being human.

There were so many metaphors, similes, quotations, and puns that the production occasionally felt scattered. Perhaps that was exactly the point — to bombard the audience with wordplay nonstop, while giving almost every singer at least one short solo moment. The pace and rhythm changed even in the smallest passages. Since the stage was so often crowded with performers and chorus members, the scenes with only one or two singers stood out more clearly.

My favorite part was the song Toja and Tonyeo sang together in the prison of the Underwater Palace. It sounded more like traditional pansori than any other part of the performance. People around the auditorium began calling out chuimsae — the cries of encouragement pansori audiences use — so they must have enjoyed it too.

I had previously seen Kim Su-in as Bassanio in the changgeuk The Merchants of Venice and as a guard and chorus member in Shim Cheong, but neither production gave me much opportunity to hear him sing. This time I could finally hear him in a leading role, and he sang very well. I had seen Kim Woo-jeong in the title role of Shim Cheong, and she was equally good here. The voices of Lee Kwang-bok and Yi So-yeon, who played Tobu and Tomo, were also excellent. The entire company danced remarkably well too.

Park Sung-woo as the Webfoot Octopus and Cho Yu-ah as the Electric Eel also sang with clear, powerful voices. Cho Yu-ah was especially funny when she broke up her vocal lines as the electricity passed through her and collapsed as though she had been electrocuted.

After hearing about the Eight Sufferings and facing the anger of his subjects, the Dragon King declares that he will no longer extend his own life by killing another creature. Yet he does not die. After two electric shocks, he looks more energetic than before. Perhaps the shocks have cured the Ninth Suffering that Toja mentions: depression.

At the end, the Terrapin leaves Toja and Tonyeo on top of the hill and departs. Tonyeo calls for her mother as she exits the stage, and Toja remains alone. Threats such as the hawk and the hunter still circle around him, but he no longer tries to escape. He smiles as he looks calmly at his familiar home.

Jung Mi-jung, playing Grandma Rabbit, explains that Toja and Tonyeo live out their natural lifespans and are later invited by the Moon God to the Moon Palace. At that moment, a round white porcelain jar appears on the rear LED screen. It resembles the moon, and I wondered whether Toja had finally become the rabbit-shaped figure we see on the lunar surface.

The production was packed with incident and gave the audience little time to stop laughing. Sometimes I wished it had been less cluttered. Then again, there seemed no harm in putting so much into a show if the point was simply to give everyone a good laugh. Perhaps theatre only needs to connect with its audience. It was good fun.


Guito | 귀토
2021 English title: Rabbit’s Eight Sufferings | 귀토－토끼의 팔란

Cast

Toja (Rabbit Boy, 兎子 | 토자): Kim Su-in 김수인
Tonyeo (Rabbit Girl, 兎女 | 토녀): Kim Woo-jeong 김우정
Terrapin (Jara | 자라): Choi Yong-seok 최용석
Dragon King (용왕): Woo Ji-yong 우지용
Webfoot Octopus (Jjukkumi | 주꾸미): Park Sung-woo 박성우

English-name source: National Changgeuk Company of Korea
https://www.ntok.go.kr/changgeuk-en/jo/jobshare/selectJobShareView.do?mi=21303
Kim Su-in follows the performer’s own English spelling.

Note: For the 2021 premiere, the National Changgeuk Company of Korea used Rabbit’s Eight Sufferings as the English title in an official YouTube video. Since the September 2026 production at the National Theater of Korea identified the work as Guito in the English surtitles, this page uses Guito as the official English title.