A Narrow Gap Between Life and Death, Reviewing One’s Life There... Play “Secret Passage” [A Glass of Performances for the Weekend]

In a strange room, two men sit facing each other. They have no idea who they are or why they have come to this place, a bewildering situation. The only things in the room are countless books, filled with their tangled memories set down in print. By reading these books, they must piece together who they are and who the other person is.
Secret Passage: THE INTERVAL, which recently opened at NOL Theater in Daehangno,is a stage adaptation of Tomohiro Maekawa’s play The Conference Room of Loopholes,reimagined to fit Korean sensibilities.
Maekawa, a leading figure in contemporary Japanese theater, is known for setting bizarre sci-fi or supernatural premises in utterly ordinary, everyday spaces and unfolding them with ease. Thanks to this distinctive style, he has built a strong fan base in Korea as well. This production also presents Maekawa’s unique worldview in an appealing way on stage, using an uncanny fantasy hidden in everyday life to reflect on life and death.

At the center of the play are two men, Dong-jae and Seo-jin, who have lost the memories of their lives. In this unknown space on the boundary between life and death, they begin to read, one by one, the books that contain their past. With every page they turn, forgotten relationships, missed choices, and the inescapable truth of death slowly come into focus.
What begins like a simple locked-room mystery gradually deepens into philosophical reflection as the men’s lost memories click together like pieces of a puzzle. The idea of reading a book that contains one’s own life at the very edge of life, or on the threshold of death—the small interval between the two—is strikingly fresh. Perhaps for that reason, when the performance ended, a murmur of laughter rose from the audience along with the complaint, "To think we have to keep reading even after we die."


The heaviest question Secret Passage: THE INTERVAL poses to its audience is the idea of reviewing a life that has already been lived. Standing at the crossroads of life and death, confronted with the trajectory of one’s life laid out in print, could we really close that book without regret?
The play gently reminds us that even memories stained with regret and hurt are precious texts that ultimately make us who we are. As Dong-jae and Seo-jin discover the links between them through the books and reconstruct the meaning of their lives, the process asks those of us struggling through the present a question: how do we want to live?
The role of Dong-jae, who unravels the tangled threads of memory amid confusion, is played by Kim Seon-ho, Yang Kyung-won, and Kim Sung-kyu, beloved across both screen and stage, each offering a deeply nuanced interpretation. Opposite them, the role of Seo-jin, who confronts the truth of their entangled relationship, is taken on by Lee Si-hyung, Oh Kyung-joo, and Kang Seung-ho, whose solid acting skills create a taut ensemble. Their finely tuned chemistry heightens the tension of the confined space and pulls the audience into the heart of the story. Secret Passage: THE INTERVAL runs at NOL Theater’s Woori Investment & Securities Hall in Daehangno through May 3.

bng@fnnews.com Kim Hee-sun Reporter