For those of you who dearly wished You’re Beautiful’s “Shin-woo hyung” would get the girl, here’s the next best thing: Park Shin-hye and Jung Yong-hwa have been cast as the leads in an upcoming drama titled Festival.
The drama hops onto the bandwagon of music-related shows, described as a “youth melodrama” that centers around the “dreams, tears, and loves” of the students at an arts university, where students pursue aspirations in dance, song, acting, and literary arts. So…Dream High meets What’s Up, v.2.0? With a dash of Mary Stayed Out All Night, to boot.
Jung Yong-hwa plays Lee Shin, and was given the hearty yes as the male lead thanks to his background as vocalist and guitar for idol band CN Blue. Shin is the vocalist in a pretty-boy band (what a stretch!) who lives and breathes music, who’s enrolled in the applied music department at school. Contrary to his warm and protective Shin-woo fromYou’re Beautiful, Jung takes on a cold, proud character. You know he’s graduated to the big time when he transitions from the Kind Best Friend to the Darcy. (Sigh. Another one.)
Park Shin-hye once again plays a cute, lively character, Lee Kyu-won, who is enrolled in the classical Korean music department and comes from a long line of classical musicians. Her family is famed for its pansori talents, and she plays the stringed gayageum.
It’s a Pyo Min-su series, which means (in my book) that it’ll be well-paced, with cute moments and some humor; PD Pyo is the director who did Full House, The World They Live In, and last year’s Coffee House. I’ve liked all of his shows (okay, not so much Insoon Is Pretty) but haven’t loved any, so his name isn’t an automatic sell for me.
Festival is scheduled for a June 22 premiere on MBC, making it a Wednesday-Thursday drama.
Um…I’m WAY IFFY on this, for a couple reasons. First is because of the premise; I don’t necessarily think that all these dramas are copycatting each other, since it could be a coincidence/Zeitgeist thing. But while I have enough excitement in me for a What’s Up, I don’t know if I have enough to look forward to both The Musical and Festival as well.
Second is Jung Yong-hwa, whom I never really cottoned to in You’re Beautiful. Oh, I liked his character — who wouldn’t like a sweetie like Shin-woo, even if you were ultimately rooting for Tae-kyung? — but his acting? Eeeeek. To be fair, he had a good episode (the 13th), but really, that was more like a good 5 minutes. To carry a drama on his own? I suppose Playful Kiss is an instance of a second project showing an improvement from the first…but then, that’s not really a drama you want to compare yourself to when you’re hoping for success, is it?
credit : javabeans@DB
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