La vegetariana

About the show

The project is a stage adaptation of the novel by South Korean writer Han Kang, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.

The vegetarian was the novel that brought her international acclaim, earning her the International Man Booker Prize in 2016. The story follows Yeong-hye, a woman described by her husband as “completely unremarkable”. She is a dutiful housewife, a considerate wife, a young woman not entirely unhappy, but without strong passions. Her husband, Mr Cheong, is an average office worker—unambitious, mildly disillusioned with life, but not excessively so. Time passes and the couple continue with their ordinary lives, yet their normality is far more fragile than it seems. Everything begins to unravel the day Yeong-hye throws away all the meat in the freezer and declares she will become a vegetarian. Her only explanation to her husband: “I had a dream”. This three-part story first recounts Yeong-hye’s decision and her family’s reaction. The second part shifts focus to her brother-in-law, a failed artist who becomes obsessed with her body. Finally, in the third act, her sister In-hye—a cosmetics shop manager—struggles to find a way to cope with the fallout from the family’s various personal catastrophes.

Note from the adaptor and director

The vegetarian is a sensual, provocative and violent text, rich in striking imagery, unexpected colours and unsettling questions. As the protagonist transforms, so too does the language of the book: from the disconcerted irritation of the husband’s first-person narration in the opening part, to the measured prose of the sister’s world, from the dense, visceral narration of Yeong-hye’s dreams to the vivid descriptions of bodies painted with flowers—blooming or withering—in the chapter centred on the brother-in-law. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience.

The team behind the production—and the subject itself—are essential. Monica Piseddu has always been Yeong-hye, the vegetarian; her presence on stage carries an ethereal yet powerful quality that both complements and feeds the character. From the very beginning, our shared passion for this book made it clear that she was the only possible choice to take centre stage. Gabriele Portoghese, an extraordinary actor with a clear, musical delivery, brings a natural detachment to his words that immediately evokes the husband.

I chose to portray the sister because she moved me deeply from my very first reading of the book, for reasons both simple and complex. Finally, Paolo Musio plays the brother-in-law — a pivotal character who delves into the tangled confusion between art and life, and the necessary yet failed glorification of valuing “what one does”.

Daria Deflorian