Esther Chung in Kim’s Convenience (2025)

Photo by Dahlia Katz

The Play “Kim’s Convenience” Puts Inconvenient Truths about Family and Cultural Identity on Display

A Netflix award winning comedy-drama from Canada brings the funny to the Boston Center for the Arts

It’s safe to say that most, if not all, of us are familiar with the local neighborhood “Convenient Store” and that is the premise of this slice of life play “Kim’s Convenience” which sparked the widespread triumphant TV series that ran for five seasons on CBC/Netflix. Adam Blanshay Productions presents this Soulpepper Theatre Company production in association with American Conservatory Theater, Canada’s leading artist-driven theatre company, and directed by Weyni Mengesha. This North American tour is currently showing at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts from Nov. 6 to Nov. 30, has been extended due to popular demand!

The play’s prima facie “basic” premise (yet ultimately complex upon closer scrutiny) is store owner “Mr. Kim”, aka “Appa” played by playwright Ins Choi, is a first-generation Korean Canadian convenience store owner. Mr. Kim, a dedicated family man who works tirelessly to keep his family fed and happy at his convenience store in Toronto, Canada. But with the changing of the times, Mr. Kim faces a contentious dilemma about his future as he experiences the effects of gentrification in a shifting environment and the growing distance between his own ideals and the dreams and aspirations of his Canadian-born children.

Ins Choi, who plays the principal character, Mr. Kim (Appa) describes Kim’s Convenience as his “…love letter to my Appa and Umma, and to all first-generation immigrants who end up making a foreign land, home.” He went on to say, “Having originated the role of Jung (the son) almost fifteen years ago, I’m grateful to now be playing the role of Appa (the dad) in this play. My kids have been preparing me for this their whole lives.”

It begins with a startling narration concerning a rift between Japan and Korea. “Mr. Kim” often starts it off with “In 1904, Japan attacked Korea…” Then goes on and on to about how Japan tried to enslave Korea while customers listen respectfully yet reluctantly. I thought this helped bring the audience into Mr. Kim’s world to some extent, and find out more about his vigilant motives to have Japanese manufactured cars parked in front of his store in the handicap zone immediately towed! It made me want to know more about the bad blood between Japan and Korea.

Korean history was accentuated and the relationship between Japan and Korea was also put under the spotlight, which makes me wonder: why do we blame each other for what our ancestors did in the past instead of starting over in the present? This play brought some audience members to visible tears. It pierces right through your heart and awakens the fragility in one’s humanity. It reminds you of what it means to be human, to be open, to be vulnerable; which is all part of being and feeling alive. The purpose of the theater is to showcase a slice of life live on the stage and hopefully spectators will relate on some level and much like the stage, when we get back to our normal lives, we all put on our costumes and step out onto our personal “life stage”. We are all a continuous staging of plays throughout our lifespans… and this particular play reminded me of that in the most hilarious way.

The production made effective use of most of the five types of dialogue, which helped to enhance further understanding of the plot and plot twists:

• Outer dialogue. Outer dialogue is the spoken interaction between characters — what readers “hear” when people in your story speak out loud. …
• Inner dialogue. …
• Indirect dialogue. …
• Dialect. …
• Monologue.

However, the most interesting and comically effective dialogue display was the intra-familial dialect, especially between Mr. Kim and his daughter “Janet” portrayed by Kelly J. Seo. The slang term for dialogue spoken only between family members is familect. This refers to a family’s unique set of invented words, inside jokes, and phrases that create a sense of intimacy and unity within the group

There were lively familial nuances and eccentricities that rendered definitive moments of laughter balanced with respective moments of sadness providing opportunities for reflection and impugn our own notions of what it means to be a family. The sacrifices our parents make for us while neglecting their own dreams and passions. We see ourselves in this Korean family in spite of racialized identity. The play pontificates the inarguable fact that we are all part of this human family. We all experience joy, sorrow and moments of hilarity and eventually we all succumb to our fallible humanity. There was preeminently a plethora of unspoken “stuff” between Mr. Kim and his daughter which I find particularly relatable in the context of “real-life” situations that I’ve even experienced with my own family. Our parents don’t always “tell” us they love us, some, especially parents like Mr. Kim who comes from another generation where “feelings” were not necessarily overtly conveyed. It is what we now know as our “love language”.

“Janet” felt a need to hear that her father loves and appreciates her but Mr. Kim feels like he has already “shown” his love and appreciation for her by what he’s done for her over the years, which in “love language” lingo is known as “acts of service.” It was during this part of the play when audience members were visibly in tears over the emotional tug and pull between father and daughter. Then you have “Jung” the prodigal son portrayed by Ryan Jinn, who had a falling out with his father Mr. Kim and left home at an early age, only to return for possible reconciliation and a better future for himself. The mother “Umma” portrayed by Esther Chung played mostly a supporting role, mediating between the father and their adult children as most mothers often do; although that is changing with the evolutionary roles of women in contemporary society which in some instances is translating to more stay-at-home dads while mothers dominate the workforce.

At times due to the accents, the rapid-fire speech was hard to understand, but there was always the opportunity to contextualize it which made things eventually clearer. The accents, broken English and speedy speech actually made the play more endearing with a quirky offbeat quality that I enjoyed.

Despite the intermittent disharmony within family members on the stage, in the context of our current societal reality—with political infighting and wars raging between countries, the play reminds us that our immediate families, whether biological or ones that we create for ourselves, is where we find our true core of selfhood and find our peace despite all that is going on in the outer world.

When it came to race matters between Asians and African Americans, there were dual tensions between racialized acceptance and racialized suspicion and inherent lack of trust based on societal misconceptions and indoctrinations that most of us rail against on a daily basis. A stark reminder that racism is part of the air that we all breathe. And despite our best intentions, we all have our internal and external struggles when it comes to seeing beyond perceived non-scientifically based racial differences and just see each other in one another as just part of “the human race.” This play was about an emancipation of our vulnerable humanity, an invitation to release our preconceived notions and inherited prejudices and once we get beyond that and can laugh at it and at ourselves, then we can strive and move beyond it; in spite of what we’ve been taught about our racialized, socioeconomic and cultural differences…

The sole African American actor Brandon McKnight, who played four different recurring black characters, one being the daughter’s love interest, with hilariously awkward yet touching gradations that added that little sprinkle of pepper to imbue additional zest to an already zesty production. I suppose that, for this purpose, he was literally “the token black” guy who perpetuates as well as challenges black stereotypes.

The set created a realistic feel of being in an actual convenience store, which as an onlooker gave me a sense of familiarity which facilitated just sitting back and absorbing this thoughtfully staged alternate reality.

Kim’s Convenience is seemingly a localized familial Resorgimento in comparison to the 19th century movement for Italian political pursuits to free itself from foreign rule after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, similar to the desires of the more liberal and modernized children of immigrant parents who aim to “free” themselves from the cultural and familial expectations of their more conservative and traditional “foreign” born parents. It begs the question: can there ever be a price tag on how much we owe to our parents for our personal freedoms and gains at the expense of their own personal losses and sacrifices?

Hailed “the most successful Canadian play of the last decade” by ClassicalFM, Kim’s Convenience was initially fashioned as part of the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival. The début creation was shaped by Soulpepper Theatre Company in Toronto, ON and grew into a universally successful TV show on CBC and Netflix subsequent to its original run.

Spectator William Horkar relished in the fact that he was able to compare and contrast the play with the Netflix series. He expressed feeling a sense of familiarity with the premise and the characters which made seeing the live performance that much more enjoyable. However he went on to say, ” My thoughts on [this] play are many and somewhat mixed up with my recollection of the rendering of the [Netflix] series. But at its core it spoke to me as a family drama, a story of immigrants and culture, difference and similarity and of a maturing into relationship and responsibility to self and others. I’m very glad I had the opportunity to see it…”

Despite the juicy familial dramata and tensions and the edgy sociopolitical undercurrents, this play still manages to be a constant of comical crescendos that rarely let up without ever letting us down.

Kim’s Convenience is “WOKE” without being preachy. It is an intelligent, incisive and instructive gem of a play, abounding with thunderous laughter and clever comicality! A must see! Five out of five stars for me!

For more information on Kim’s Convenience visit

https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/kims-convenience/@huntingtontheatre#KimsBOS

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Spirit of Change Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World anthologies out of India, Poets Reading the News, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at:  http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.-