SYNOPSIS

Park Seong-hoon is devastated when his girlfriend ends their relationship. She insists that she has always accommodated him and followed his wishes, while Seong-hoon argues that her refusal to express an opinion forced him to make even the smallest decisions for both of them. In the middle of their argument, however, he suddenly asks, “Who are you?” The woman standing before him is not his girlfriend at all, but Kang Hye-jin, an employee of EXIT, a breakup agency hired to deliver the farewell on her behalf.

EXIT is run by Choi Hyeon-min, a restrained and highly methodical man who relies on established procedures to keep other people’s emotions at a distance. When Hye-jin reports that Seong-hoon is refusing to accept the breakup, Hyeon-min tells her to follow the manual and return the engagement ring sent back by his former girlfriend. Seong-hoon continues trying to contact her, almost like a stalker, until Hye-jin warns him that he has been blocked and may face legal action if he approaches her again.

Hyeon-min, meanwhile, arranges to sell one of two tickets he had bought for a HONNE concert. The buyer is Cha Min-ji, who has spent much of her relationship adjusting herself to a boyfriend who rarely contacts her. She had hoped they might attend the concert together, but in the end she can purchase only Hyeon-min’s spare ticket.

At home, Hyeon-min’s father and younger sister celebrate his birthday. Hyeon-min looks at his sister with inexplicable sadness, telling her to sleep well and grow up quickly. Even in this familiar setting, he remains tense and firmly anchored in a reality that does not allow him to relax.

Interwoven with their lives is Seong-hoon’s unfinished webtoon about Geppetto and Pinocchio. Lonely Geppetto carves Pinocchio from wood, but once the puppet develops a will of his own, he no longer obeys his creator. Geppetto therefore makes two potions: a blue one that renders Pinocchio compliant and a gray one that allows him to forget selected painful memories. The potions control Pinocchio for a time, but they cannot resolve the sorrow beneath his rebellion.

Hyeon-min later visits a model residence while looking for a home in which his younger sister can live independently. There he encounters Min-ji again, now working as a sales representative. She explains the residence with professional composure, yet occasionally allows her more candid self to emerge.

As Hye-jin spends more time with Seong-hoon, she begins to understand his anger at being denied a direct and meaningful ending. She admits that she herself was once abandoned without explanation. She also recognizes him as the webtoon artist whose work she admires and understands why he has been unable to continue the series. Encouraging him to write again, she suggests a new story called A Proper Farewell when he dismisses conventional love stories as tedious.

Hye-jin eventually concludes that she is unsuited to breakup work and submits her resignation. Before leaving, she confronts Hyeon-min with the truth that he, too, is holding on to a past from which he has never properly separated—and that he may be the person most in need of EXIT’s services.

Hyeon-min and Min-ji later visit a music-listening room together. When Hyeon-min sees the singer, he becomes visibly shaken and asks whether she is So-min. She is merely someone who resembles the person in his memory. Min-ji assumes that So-min must be a former girlfriend, but Hyeon-min is pulled back into a much older loss.

Min-ji’s boyfriend breaks up with her after learning that she went to listen to music with Hyeon-min. She assures Hyeon-min that he is not responsible: the signs of the relationship’s collapse had already been there, even if she had chosen not to acknowledge them.

In Seong-hoon’s completed webtoon, the suffering Pinocchio refuses Geppetto’s offer of the gray potion. Instead, he tells his father to drink it, hoping that Geppetto might finally be happy. Yet Seong-hoon ultimately changes the ending by allowing Pinocchio to possess and retain his own identity. Hye-jin joyfully waits for his next series, while both the artist and his creation begin to move beyond relationships defined by control.

Hyeon-min’s hidden past is finally revealed. Twenty years earlier, he let go of his younger sister So-min’s hand at an amusement park and lost her. The sister who has remained beside him is not part of his present life, but the child preserved in his memory. So-min tells her brother that it is time to accept their farewell. Hyeon-min smiles through his tears, and the burden he has carried for two decades begins, at last, to grow lighter.

At the end, Hyeon-min and Min-ji exchange business cards and introduce themselves properly. Their relationship begins only after each has acknowledged what has ended—a new meeting made possible by a sufficient, and finally accepted, farewell.


REVIEW

I assumed that the theatre would be in the main Daehangno theatre district, but when I checked the map, I found that it was closer to Sungkyunkwan University. It was a small theatre, and this appeared to be the tryout premiere of the musical. There were only five performances over three days. I first noticed Bae Hyeung-bin when he appeared in Arang, so I was pleased to see that he had taken the leading role in a musical and went to see it.

While waiting inside the auditorium, I asked someone from the theatre company to confirm the official English title: A Proper Farewell. Although the production information mentioned COVID-19 and related circumstances, the word “farewell” made me expect something heavier than a simple love story.

As the performance had unreserved seating, I had wondered how the seats would be assigned. Mine was in the front row, slightly to the left. The rows behind were tiered, and the theatre was small, so the view would probably have been good from the back as well.

The production opened with the sound of the instruments. The drums surrounded the space with a pleasantly fast beat, supported by guitar and bass, and I could also hear a keyboard. The full cast opened the show together. The song was strong and energetic, and the choreography was clean.

The story takes place from the autumn to early winter of 2019. According to the production description, it seems to have been conceived with the breakups and sense of loss surrounding the beginning of the COVID-19 period in mind. The plot itself, however, did not seem tied to that particular time, and its treatment of loss was based on universal emotions.

The meeting between webtoon artist Seong-hoon and EXIT employee Hye-jin showed the frustrating sides of a romantic relationship. Playing the role of Seong-hoon’s girlfriend, Hye-jin says that she suppressed her own opinions and always went along with what he wanted. Seong-hoon, on the other hand, complains that his girlfriend never made any decisions and left everything to him.

His girlfriend ends the relationship through the agency, but Seong-hoon’s refusal to accept it and his obsessive behavior were frightening. A relationship is only a relationship; if someone said she no longer wanted it, I would let her go out of sheer pride, if nothing else. Instead, Seong-hoon was beginning to resemble the father he had hated. Seeing the extent of his obsession also made me think that he should be reported for stalking. On the other hand, his girlfriend’s decision to avoid telling him herself or explaining her reasons and to hire an agency instead seemed cowardly. There should at least be some courtesy in beginning and ending a relationship.

Only after Hye-jin reveals that she herself was ghosted and sings a powerful duet with Seong-hoon does he begin to accept the breakup. M07, “Words Left Behind, Memories, Wounds,” was a rock-based number in which the two alternated lines before coming together in unison and harmony. I liked its structure.

Seong-hoon is a webtoon artist writing a spin-off story about Geppetto and Pinocchio, but after the breakup, his story also starts going off the rails. Hye-jin is an enthusiastic fan who has regularly left comments on his series. Once she begins to see Seong-hoon as a person rather than merely the recipient of a breakup notice, she tells him her own story and leaves the job that never suited her. Instead of simply delivering a breakup according to the manual, she begins to perform breakup assistance in its truer sense by helping Seong-hoon bring the relationship to a proper end.

Simply passing on someone else’s words according to a manual cannot provide emotional closure. Pinocchio’s discovery of his own identity had already begun when he started acting against Geppetto’s wishes. In the webtoon, however, his insistence that Geppetto—not Pinocchio—must change also reflects Seong-hoon’s own change.

Hyeon-min remained stiff and emotionally restrained throughout the musical. The framed photograph he looks at early in the show and the girlfriend whom other characters assume had left him did not seem sufficient to explain the strength of the barrier he had built against the world. Only after the story of the amusement park was revealed did I understand that his guilt had left him emotionally cut off from the world for twenty years.

The plot surrounding Hyeon-min made sense once the revelation arrived. Still, I wondered whether the scenes with his family, including his conversations and dance with his sister, could contain small hints of what would later be revealed. This might allow the audience’s questions to grow gradually as the story proceeds.

Because Hyeon-min is a character who suppresses his feelings, his songs were generally quiet. I found that slightly disappointing. The other characters had songs that opened up at the right moments, with enough movement between high and low points to create tension and give the performers opportunities to show their vocal interpretation.

I particularly liked M06, “In My Memory,” sung by Hyeon-min’s younger sister So-min. Yoon Yeo-eun’s voice opened out clearly, and her control made her very pleasant to hear. Peter Yun was also dramatic as Hyeon-min’s father, Choi Jun-seok, both in his duet with So-min and in Geppetto’s lament in M05, “Geppetto’s Song.” The melodies of Hyeon-min and So-min’s duets in M11, “The Season of Lilacs,” and M12, “The Last Carnival (Reprise),” were flowing and attractive. By this point, however, I thought Hyeon-min could have been given a melody that allowed his suppressed emotions to break out more clearly. Baek Doo Jin, who played Seong-hoon, had a strong, focused voice that carried beautifully.

Lee Minhi, who played Min-ji, also opened up with a clear voice in her solo M09, “My Story.” The accompaniment consisted almost entirely of keyboard, and I liked the space it left around her voice.

Min-ji wants to attend a HONNE concert, but her boyfriend will not go with her. He also fails to appear when they arrange to meet, saying that he is busy working late, yet she continues to endure the relationship. In the end, he uses her meeting with Hyeon-min as an excuse to break up with her. The warning signs had already been there, and I felt sorry for Min-ji because she had spent so long in a relationship in which she was always the one who gave way.

Min-ji works as a guide at a housing show home, explaining the residence’s layout, including the kitchen and living room. I found the episode in which she meets Hyeon-min while he is looking for a home for his sister somewhat puzzling. It seems intended to show the difference between Min-ji at work and in private, while also suggesting that Hyeon-min is trying to let his sister go.

However, the 88-square-metre high-end residence, together with the depiction of Hyeon-min as the owner of a breakup agency with several employees working according to a manual, makes him appear quite wealthy. If his wealth is important to the story, I thought it might help to include a little more explanation or to place a few hints earlier in the musical.

The six actors filled the production well with their singing. During the ensemble numbers, one of the male performers sang the high notes with a particularly solid sound, which I enjoyed.

In the end, the musical follows several people who have experienced different forms of farewell: Seong-hoon, who begins to move beyond the pain of his breakup with Hye-jin’s genuine help; Min-ji, who starts to recover herself through a new encounter; Jun-seok, whose dementia distances him from pain as he loses his memories; Geppetto, who must change when Pinocchio discovers his own identity; and Hyeon-min, who finally begins to set down the guilt he has carried for twenty years. They suffer enough, and then begin to live again in their own ways.

A proper farewell may require help from oneself and from the people around us, but in the end, accepting the farewell and moving forward depends on the person experiencing it.