A Scottish woman sings Arirang. A Korean man dances in a ceilidh. Both words were new to me – the first a traditional Korean folk song; the second a traditional Scottish gathering that features group dancing — but both quickly felt familiar, rather than foreign, in “Tether,” a remarkable collaboration between Scotland’s Wonder Fools and South Korea’s Theatre SAN. “Tether” presents a romantic, bi-lingual, cross-cultural, multigenerational saga in a lively, tuneful, often humorous production. It is also unusually accessible: There are captions in English and Korean for every moment and at every performance.
The bittersweet tale of love and loss that “Tether” tells in three different years – jumping back and forth between 1918, 1951 and 1970 – might have been dramatized with more clarity. But the acting, the dancing, the singing and the palpable sense of connection made the show a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe for me.
The cast members were already dancing, backed by a live four-piece band, as I entered the theater, and they apparently had been grabbing members of the audience to dance with them. (I took a seat in a back row.) The dancing makes way for Jane (Isabella Jarrett), in Glasgow, singing that Arirang; a visitor from Korea asks her how she knows Korean – and the story begins. We go back in time to meet Dae Han (Hyeon-kyu Choi), a young Christian missionary from Korea, who has arrived in Glasgow in 1918 to study, choosing that city because it was the birthplace of the first person to translate the Bible into Korean. There he meets a young Jane (Molly Bryson), the daughter of his landlord. They clash at first; she teases him. But they eventually bond deeply over their mutual love of folk music. It is a love that lasts for decades, but only in absentia. He soon returns to Korea to join in the fight against Japanese rule.
In 1951, during the Korean War, Jane’s daughter Nancy has traveled to Korea to work as a nurse, armed with a letter for Dae Han. In 1970, it’s Dae Han’s granddaughter who travels to Glasgow to meet Jane. It’s a quirk of this production, and a factor in audience confusion over the timeline, that Jane ages (she becomes Isabella Jarrett), while Dae Han looks the same no matter what the year (he is portrayed throughout by Hyeon-kyu Choi, without any adjustment in makeup or hair.)
What I’ll likely most remember about “Tether” are the melding of Scottish and Korean folk music, and in particular the moment when a Korean man sang “Auld Lang Syne” and it was the freshest and most moving rendition I’ve ever heard – all the more meaningful because we’ve learned that Aegukga, the Korean national anthem, shares the same melody.
*****Tether runs through August 31 at Main Hall at Summerhall as part of the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
