After majoring in piano, Jiwon becomes famous for a song he plays at his friend’s wedding. The song was actually written for his ex-fiancé, who broke up with him because she did not think Ji-won would be able to maintain his life as a pianist. As they broke up, Ji-won thought that the song would go to waste. However, in his friend’s wedding where he goes to play piano, he decides to play this song. The video of him playing the piano was uploaded on YouTube, and a lot of people asked him to play the same song in other weddings. Consequently, the song saved jobless Ji-won who became a professional pianist for wedding ceremonies since then. One day, Ji-won gets a call to play the song for another wedding. He thought it was one of the usual weddings he went to perform so, he accepted the offer. However, while talking to the groom on phone, he realizes that the bride is in fact, his ex-fiancé. As soon as he finds out, he decides not to go to the wedding and asks his friend to go instead. Unfortunately, Ji-won’s friend tells him that he is unavailable on that date. Luckily, his friend recommends a student who has the time. However, since the student has no experience playing the piano in a wedding, Ji-won calls the student via Facetime and tells him which songs he has to play in the wedding and the stories behind them. As he explains to the student, he confesses that the bride is actually his ex-fiancé. The next part of the play begins with the two’s love story. The two first meet when Ji-won’s ex accidently bumps into Ji-won, spilling coffee on Ji-won’s bag. Inside it are sheets of music Ji-won had taken notes for years. All of them are soaked with coffee, and Ji-won is very angry at her because piano meant everything to Ji-won. She apologizes and asks Ji-won if she can borrow his music sheet for a day and promises that she’ll have them recovered by tomorrow. She stays up all night that day copying every note Ji-won wrote down. Ji-won was moved by what she did, then they fell in love. It wasn’t long until the two got engaged. After getting engaged, Ji-won and his ex were talking about the house they will be living in. Since piano was everything to Ji-won, he had to have a room for the piano. However, his ex thought having a piano room would be no good because if so, there would be no room for her mother to sleep when she visits their house. In fact, she thought it would be better for Ji-won to give up his dream as a pianist and have a decent job that pays well. Her words brought a fight, and they broke up. After the breakup, Ji-won was depressed and could not play the piano because he was traumatized. His father told him to go to his friend’s wedding to play the piano, and even though Jiwon refused to go there, he did at last. In the wedding, he played the song he made to play in his wedding with his ex, and since then, he had been working as a professional pianist for weddings. As Jiwon told his friend’s student about what he has been through, he thought about not going to the wedding, or even going to the wedding to ruin it. However, he finally decides to go to her wedding to celebrate her wedding by playing the song he wrote for her. Wedding Player is a one-man musical which is about a pianist who lives for music. To express how passionate Ji-won is about piano, the stage is covered with piano related props. Even though there are not many things located in the stage, a fence that looks like a piano keyboard and the floor covered with music notes effectively reflect Ji-won’s characteristics. When Ji-won calls his friend’s student though facetime, the actor chooses one of the audience to act as the student. Since all the student had to do was to answer the Facetime, the audience was not so pressured to go to the stage and improvise, but to sit down in the audience seat and just listen to what Ji-won says. As it did not stress the audience but rather made all of them focus, I thought it was a clever way to include the audience. In addition, since Wedding Player is a musical about a pianist, the music played in the musical was all based on piano, and it was all done live. There was a grand piano in the center of the stage, which the actor used for the play, and there was also a piano in the back of the stage which a professional pianist played. When the actor played the first song of the musical, I thought the grand piano was only for acting, and it did not make any sounds while the real pianist would actually play the piano in the back of the stage. Most of the time, the pianist in the back of the stage was playing the piano, and the actor sang while pretending to play, but sometimes the actor actually played the grand piano for short songs, and even did a duet with the pianist in the back of the stage. As time went by, it was interesting to guess where the music was actually coming from. Meanwhile, it is common for a musical to have a number of actors play the same character according to the schedule. Hence, I thought since the show I watched was played by a single actor, the cast would be consisted of male actors. However, the character Yoo Jiwon is played by a number of actors and actresses. Thus, the pictures of diverse actors and actresses on the article were not all different characters in a single play, but all same Yoo Ji-won in different plays. Before I knew that Yoo Ji-won sounded like a normal name to me, but after hearing that the character is played by both actors and actresses, I realized that the character intentionally had a gender neutral name. It was interesting to see a one-man musical with a lot of props that were carefully set to reflect the character. However, considering that the musical was ran for 90 minutes, it did not have a well-structured story. As Wedding Player is a musical, the actor told the story by both acting and singing a song. However, since what he acted and the lyrics of the songs were almost identical, the speed of the development of the story was slow, making it easy for the audience to lose interest. In addition, the musical could have been more amusing if the story was interesting enough, despite the content of the actor’s lines and the lyrics of the songs being similar. The story of Wedding Player was basically started with Yoo Jiwon getting a call to play the piano in his ex-fiancé’s wedding, and ends with him determined to go to the wedding. I believe the musical was too much of a personal story for the character Yoo Ji-won with no dramatic effects. Since the musical itself is played by a single actor, there is a possibility of boredom for the audience. On the other hand, an introduction to new characters throughout the play would have automatically brought interest and attention from the audience. Thus, I believe Wedding Player would have been more interesting if it had a more dramatic storyline and diverse effects to replenish the demerits of a one-man musical. 

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