Based on the authors/performers’ research trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, their drama, Freedom: The Most Expensive Capitalist World, combined monologues, speeches interactive with the audience (including sales pitches) and with each other, and principally the film of their North Korean experience. They began with the notion that North Korea “is the last remnant of the Cold War” which could be examined as an “enemy” of the West according to stereotypical descriptions and propaganda. With the trip being heavily controlled, it seems doubtful that the authors could have importantly separated reality and what they were allowed to see. There were some possibly off-the-cuff meetings with people, though, and many of things of daily life they heard about in the West seemed to be indeed based in truth. But the country wasn’t all bleak. I thought much of the film quite amateurish in substance, though I enjoyed glimpses of daily life in North Korea that are seldom seen “outside.” The drama itself took the form of a touristic narrative. Products that the authors may or may not have picked up on their trip were auctioned off to the audience at intervals. One potent story about need for funds to adopt an adorable child who’d been shown as having been attracted to one of the authors led to a pitch that ended up on a metaphorical cutting floor. Several such reversals between the narrative and recommendations based on the film occurred later in real time. Why? Although the performers, especially Maja Pelevic (who made much of being gay), spoke convincingly, they just went on too repetitively and too long. The last portion of the film seemed to take ages to unwind. The women didn’t appear to know how to get to the ending. Somewhere along the way out of North Korea, ideas regarding politics, cultures, propaganda, and even atomic bomb production seemed to be left on the train.
