Theater review: Energetic joy of ‘Cookin” makes an appetizing show for an all-ages audience

Children’s Theatre Company is out to shrink your world. In both 2019 and 2022, it brought an Ethiopian circus troupe to Minneapolis to open its season. And now the company has imported South Korea’s most popular theatrical event of the 21st century, one that’s toured to 323 cities in 60 countries.

“Cookin’” first drew attention (and a “Best Performance” award) at Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1999. You could call it a sequel to the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1998 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, in that it has the same creator (Seung-Whan Song) and it seeks to give the world an entertaining taste of Korean culture.

And taste plays a role in “Cookin’,” which is a feast of physical comedy set in a caterer’s kitchen where every surface, pot, pan and utensil becomes a percussion instrument; plates fly; and slicing and dicing are both artistic and chaotic. It’s ...