Don't Cry, Hong-do

Deceived by love, weeping for money

Im Seon-gyu’s Deceived by Love, Weeping for Money defined sinpa melodrama in the colonial era and remains familiar to audiences today. The original focuses on the tragic fate of Hong-do. Arirang’s new madang-akgeuk version, however, does not stop at tears.

Women’s lives have changed since the colonial period, and that change calls for a new sense of female agency. Don’t Cry, Hong-do approaches a well-loved story but reshapes it with a new feminist consciousness: Hong-do is still a kind and gentle Korean woman, but now she relies on no one and forges her own destiny — reborn as a woman of our time.

The play approaches today’s new pains through the audience’s most familiar memories, conveying the will to overcome them all through love — and, we hope, giving audiences a precious moment to find their fundamental reasons for living amid an ever-faster, ever more complicated world.

Reimagining the tragedy of Hong-do, robbed even of love by class and money, as the story of an enterprising woman who overcomes materialism and social alienation, it offers new laughter and emotion along with nostalgia. Crossing the boundaries of time, place, age and class, it is a joyous festival shared by audience and actors, telling ordinary people’s joys and sorrows with humour through song and dance.

Madang-akgeuk — a new genre combining traditional performance and modern madang-geuk with akgeuk musical drama — brings folk song, pansori and traditional dance together with classic popular melodies for a feast of sights and fun.