**When a Dictator Was Just a Lonely Teen**  
**Review of** ***The Supreme Leader*** **at Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, NJ** through Oct 26

By Ellen Webster

"Love can just be love. It can be simple," Sophie says to young Kim Jong Un. She means it. That's the thing that breaks your heart.

Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, New Jersey, opens its 22nd season with *The Supreme Leader*, Don X. Nguyen's sharp comedy imagining the North Korean dictator's final days as a Swiss boarding school student. This East Coast premiere, directed by Sarah Shin, is the first production staged by the new artistic director in residence, Chris Cragin-Day. It runs through October 26, 2025.

The fictional telling of the true story creates an insulated bubble where Un passes as just another diplomat's kid, his identity as the son of North Korea's Supreme Leader hidden. Shin invites us to "laugh and be silly," and we do. In an inventive scene at Ikea, Un is frightened by everything about the behemoth store while Sophie notes that Ikea rhymes with Korea and suggests it could have North and South sections. The emotional register soon shifts, tempers escalate, and we're visited by an unwelcome intensity foretelling an abrupt halt to any chance the future leader had of being seen as a decent human being.

 The central tension grips from the start: we, the audience, know who and what Un becomes, but the characters don't. We watch as the 17-year-old navigates a crush on Sophie and loses himself in painting, experiencing perhaps the only creative freedom he'll ever know, until darkness descends with the sudden news that he's next in line to rule North Korea.

Pimprenelle Noël as Sophie is luminous—the beating heart and moral center of the production. Her dance background shows in every gesture; she moves with poise, precision, spunk, and joy. When she's on stage, her life force is palpable. Sophie personifies everything Un is being groomed away from: heart over force, authentic connection, transaction-free friendship. We watch, hoping her aliveness will rub off. It won't, and that's the tragedy.

Jonon Gansukh faces the challenge of making Un someone we can almost root for. His physicality is impressive, and when warmth breaks through—purposely occasional—it suggests what might exist in an alternative reality. His man/boy teen is transitioning into a cold, ruthless tyrant, which calls for enormous emotional agility. Gansukh delivers.

Nathan Malin's Roger, Sophie's even-tempered boyfriend, balances keen wit and emotional weight with effortless, understated grace. Meanwhile, Un's Minder (Kurt Uy)—never named but ever present—adds spicy slapstick and perfectly calibrated tension, ensuring we never forget the future leader's impossible burden, the one that will deplete him of all joy except memories of his mother and Sophie's friendship.

Sean Perreira's staging is elegant and uncluttered. Moveable screens segment the space and reflect backgrounds. Daisy Torralba's minimal period props—box TVs, flip phones, and a 2002 calendar—ground us. Sophia Simons' music, subtle and beguiling, flows like transition sentences—from orchestral swells and pop to the smooth jazz of a Bob Ross TV art class, which one imagines Un may have tuned to. And the lighting! Ari Kim's choices support the emotional trapeze being acted on stage and contribute comic moments of their own, especially as Kurt Uy's Minder strikes poses. The design elements serve the story without overwhelming it.

The universal pain at the play's core lands with force: Un's desperate yearning for the father love he'll never receive. He can earn respect through viciousness, though. History suggests his time in Switzerland revealed something crucial: stripped of status and recognition, reduced to just another face in the crowd, he couldn't bear it. Without an inner sense of worth, being unremarkable was intolerable. For someone like that, dominance isn't chosen so much as it becomes inevitable—the only path that makes sense when love remains out of reach.

See this play for the ensemble's unity and Noël's magnetism. See it for Nguyen's writing and Shin's clarity that finds both comedy and tragedy in the same breath. See it because it asks us to sit with an uncomfortable, if familiar, question: What happens when someone who desperately seeks love learns that dominance is easier to grasp?

*The Supreme Leader* runs through October 26 at Mile Square Theatre, 1400 Clinton Street, Hoboken. **Tickets at: milesquaretheatre.org**. Arrive early for a glass of wine and to view Wendy Setzer's lobby paintings.

Ellen Webster is a writer, speaker, fan of decent human beings, and founder of Age Buoyantly. Join her free community at: [http://ellenwebster.com.](http://ellenwebster.com/)

 

The Supreme Leader: When a Dictator Was Just a Lonely Teen