Brighton Fringe 2026
Counterattack: Youth
Gain (Amy) Park
Genre: Adaptation, Contemporary, Costume, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, International, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre, Translation
Venue: The Brunswick
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Marriage as love. Marriage as responsibility and stability. Marriage as a trade or working partnership. What’s never broached here is a world without men and men to marry. Lovers are fine but will they commit? Counterattack: Youth plays at the Brunswick directed by its writer Gain (Amy) Park till May 23.
It should be compelling on its next outing.
Review
“Is it raining? No it’s amazing.” There’s been a wedding. Four Korean women talk at a London bar’s dinner table they gradually assemble themselves: drinks, later food. On marriage, of course. Marriage as love. Marriage as responsibility and stability. Marriage as a trade or working partnership. What’s never broached here is a world without men and men to marry. Lovers are fine but will they commit? Counterattack: Youth plays at the Brunswick directed by its writer Gain (Amy) Park till May 23.
Set in the cellar of the Brunswick bar, there’s authentic fairy-lighting and bar culture, surrounded in a horseshoe by a drink-sipping audience. Millennial pop plays and idiomatic dialogue – “it’s so cringe” -flows for the next hour.
Adapted from the acclaimed Korean original production by Theatre Group Dalddeuda, Counterattack: Youth comes to the UK to follow four women in their late twenties who gather at a pub for this wedding celebration. Two working women banter about trips to London. They’re stranded as London workers in a world that doesn’t love them back.
They’re soon joined by another two and swap comments about experience, the minimum wage. Eight years out of university and they’re struggling. Real pints of lager arrive – a cultural signifier of the nineties they reference – and later real food arrives. “The system is broken ” precarity and late-capitalist realism is everywhere. Is there no alternative? Not if you’re bickering on a rare reunion.
But they’re nearing 30. Is that dangerous? Late Millennials who take up Spice roles they’re already worried. Though dramatic tension might seem lacking the narrative is compelling, Four actors – Siyun Leem (Hannah), Margarida Bartilotti (Sarah), Saho Takano (Yuna), Yoon Kim (Ella) – are all consummate.
Tensions boil early. People exit. And return with Yuna the bride (shout out to costume designer Yunhye Choi throughout). Clearly the narrative is studded with aspiration. Jobs are insecure and leave you nothing. An independent world seems out of reach.
Talk is fluent and characters build. Leem’s Hannah the swiftly-divorced pragmatist (thus it’s her who’s ‘tainted’) the bride, Bartilotti’s Sarah the sassy influencer and Kim’s Ella the cool wannabe bride who’s expert in makeup. Details on bared shoulders and make-up. “I had a boyfriend before. In primary school!” For two days, Bartilotti’s hard-pressed singleton Sarah finally confesses. Clearly a competitive environment. Can these four friends work out a way to fight back the patriarchy’s glass slipper?
It’s broken neatly by fourth-walling and grabbing an audience member as “Wannabe” thrashes out. The young woman is subjected to an amusing barrage of faux memories. The production might thrive with even more of these. One receives a call from a matchmaking agency. Societal expectations press in. “Meeting naturally” is a last-ditch defence.
Cute-meet is a ping on the phone and a texting compulsion. But it might be your team leader as you work as a graphics designer at a dating agency despite never managing to date yourself. After work. Sarah was off work and has to graft weekends and evenings to make up for it.
Reveals – the stigma of Hannah’s divorce, the commitment-phobia of Ella’s ten-year lover Josh – unravel. And Ella took a day off work to go in a blind date… That shocks the bride! Options are needed. And builds to a resolution. As Ella, Kim’s excellent at swivelling from defensive in the ace of traditional sexual roles (for instance cheating to go on a date) to the first counter-attack: “I followed the rules. I did everything right. But what if the rules are all wrong?” Ella asks. Taylor Swift’s ‘Long Live’ anthems the kind of man you should look for – “you held your head like a hero” – with delicious irony.
High in content the play is a little low on dramatic shape. But it’s rich in promise and its development – especially dragging on more audience members – frames its dynamic.
The four actors who’ve contributed to the play’s development are idiomatically attuned and wholly inside this work. It’s fluently delivered and faultlessly inhabited. Originating in Korea itself it’s been both translated – so much so you’d never realize – and located in London.
This is a loveable, sassy and unique show about Korean women and their aspirations. Hemmed in by expectations, driven by contemporary work-practice that skags across personal agency even more, it has a value beyond its apparently modest dramaturgy. It should be compelling on its next outing.
Producer Jaemin Yu, Dramaturg Ayla Samson, Associate Producer Euna Ko, Costume Design Yunhye Choi, Produced by Logue Studio. Photo Credit: Lottie O’Donnell.
For more information about this production’s run at major fringe events this year (tbc), please contact Jaemin Yu (producer) jaemin.yu.0508@gmail.com
