ORONO – It slices. It dices. It sautes and slices. It rocks. It rolls. It bangs on bowls. It seasons and sizzles and the fun never fizzles.

And it all can be yours for the price of admission. People in the first 10 rows will get free bouncing balls, and a few lucky viewers will get dim sum – or a bag of trash.

No, this isn’t an infomercial for Ron Popeil’s latest food-processing wonder. It’s “Cookin’,” and, as the crowded house at Maine Center for the Arts found out Wednesday night, it’s hot in the kitchen.

Created by Korean director Seung Whan Song, “Cookin'” tracks four chefs as they try to prepare a wedding banquet in an hour and a half.

Three of them are pros. The fourth is the nephew of the restaurant’s owner.

What starts as a frantic chopping session turns into Benihana on steroids – with better music.

Since its debut in 1997, “Cookin'” has become one of Korea’s most popular and longest-running shows. It’s easy to see why. The athletic, mostly nonverbal comedy act has been compared with “Stomp” and Blue Man Group. But it’s more flavorful. Wednesday’s performance was a true feast for the senses.

Mirth and mayhem ensue as the chefs barbecue their way through the evening. Cabbage

flies, a duck escapes and a pair of audience members find a fly in their soup. Plate juggling, magic tricks and broomstick battles add to the spectacle. And the dumpling-making race, which pits two teams from the audience against each other, was hilarious.

But it’s the beat that really wows the crowd. The show opens quietly, with the actors coaxing music out of metal bowls with chopsticks.

Then the sound builds to a crescendo, setting the tone for the rest of the “meal.”

There’s a reason why the chefs are so buff — like the drummers in ’80s hair bands, they flail around for hours creating belly-rumbling percussion. But instead of drumsticks and cymbals, they use knives and cutting boards, pots and pans, mortars and pestles, buckets and their bodies.

It has all of the flash of a rock concert, but the rhythm derives from an ages-old music form called Nong-ak, which was developed by Korean farmers to entertain and unite their communities. In the 1970s, Nong-ak scholars created an experimental spinoff called Salmunori, which translates as “playing with four instruments.”

In “Cookin’,” the chefs replace the traditional drums and gongs with everyday kitchen utensils.

Stir-fry never sounded so good.

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.