Press Review of "This Isn't Romance"

Elizabeth Tan appearing in This isn't Romance

This Isn’t Romance Venue: Soho Theatre

Where: London - Dean Street, Soho

Date Reviewed: 18 February 2009

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Article Start'A kind of loving' might be a good sub-title for this impressive first play, last year’s winner of the Verity Bargate award, by In-Sook Chappell, a 34-year-old Anglo-Korean who was born in Seoul and raised in Chelmsford, Essex. Like her heroine, Miso Blake, Chappell was adopted in Britain; unlike Miso, she has never had any contact with her biological family.Miso, an Essex girl who grew up in Southend, returns to Seoul, finds her brother, a taxi-driver called Han Som Kim, whom she has not seen for 25 years, and develops an impassioned sexual relationship with him. They become embroiled in the underworld of businessmen and bunny girls.It’s all deeply felt, this sense of a twin or a sibling being another part of yourself – something Shakespeare writes about incessantly – and the incestuous reunion carries with it a powerful fulfilment.Other roles of critical interpreter, svelte and bitchy fashion agent, sexy waitress and caring nurse, are beautifully played by Sonnie Brown and Elizabeth Tan. There’s almost too much going on in this play for its short ninety minutes duration; but it’s a real find.Article End- Michael Coveney