refordgarry Review of The Penthouse: War in Life

The Penthouse: War in Life (2020–2021)

Crazy Puccini on Steroids - but a great gateway to Italian Opera

[23 July 2021]

This high-life Korean drama reminds you of all those bloodstained knife nightmares, that end with an abrupt fall from a high place , or more precisely Puccini's TOSCA......which coincidentally contains ALL these details! Though Penthouse's melodrama is scarcely believable, I'm still watching, since it's compulsive, with Mozart's Queen of the Night and Verdi's sumptuous Sempre Libera (La Traviata) thrown in, though I'm genuinely skeptical mere16-year-old students could master the tacitura. Pity really that Tosca's not got Soprano solos, like "E lucivan le stelle" for Tenor. Penthouse, nonetheless owes much to Kabuki and Greek Drama (Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus), whose long-forgotten audiences were frightened equally by awe-inspiring events that often shocked in juxtaposing good/evil, rich/poor, lawful/unlawful Godly/unGodly, mighty/impotent etc. The trick Penthouse seems to employ perpetually.......... is to draw its audience in - shortly before SHOCKING them! We even have the semblance of a Greek Chorus with those two chatty Heron Palace ladies and that toe-rag of a lawyer/politician. All in all, there's actually more than meets the eye to Penthouse. Hope this review will explain things a little better to the curious, or for the Music-lover to search YouTube for Puccini's, E lucivan le stelle, (Pavarotti, or Placido Domingo).