The Toronto Fringe Festival has never had the cachet of, say, the Edinburgh Fringe. But our humble annual festival has been the proving ground for a decent number of hits, ranging from the Tony Award-winning The Drowsy Chaperone (1999), which started off as essentially a private joke between Bob Martin and Don McKellar, to Boy Falls From the Sky (2019), Jake Epstein’s delightful one-man show describing the ups and downs of life as a would-be Broadway star.
Kim’s Convenience was an immediate hit at the 2011 Toronto Fringe, picking up the coveted “Patron’s Pick” Award that earned it an eighth(!) performance slot beyond its initial seven-show run. Humble beginnings, indeed. A year later, Soulpepper picked up the Convenience torch, reuniting the majority of the Fringe cast and making a bona fide theatrical star out of its creator, Ins Choi. The rest is history: a multi-year Canada-wide tour, a month-long off-Broadway residency, and a hit CBC/Netflix sitcom (2016-2021) which served as a launchpad for future Marvel star Simu Liu and soon-to-be X-Wing pilot Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (who originated the title role of Mr. Kim/“Appa” back at Fringe).
Soulpepper’s latest remount, the umpteenth time Kim’s Convenience has graced the Distillery District since 2012, is a return to tried and true form, a surefire audience pleaser (and box office guarantee) for the long-running theatre company. With playwright Choi stepping into the title role in place of Lee (presumably off helping Grogu somewhere), Convenience is back, for better and for worse.
On its surface, Kim’s Convenience is the story of one man: Korean-Canadian immigrant Mr. Kim (lovingly known as “Appa”, or “dad”), owner of a convenience store in Regent Park. But Kim’s Convenience is also the story of many men and women, Appa and his wife “Umma” (“mom”) (Esther Chung) representing here the wave of South Korean immigrants who set up shop(s) in Canada beginning around the 1960s. (There’s a funny bit where Appa and Umma are trying to come up with a name for their store, but all the other variations – “Kim’s Variety”, “Kim’s Milk”, etc. – are already taken.)
Like many a generational immigration story, Appa and Umma’s experiences are drawn in stark relief to that of their children, aspiring young photographer Janet (Kelly Seo, excellent) and her troubled brother Jung (Ryan Jinn). Running barely an hour-and-a-half, the play is roughly divided into two halves, the first part devoted to Janet’s straining against the occasionally overbearing ways of Appa, while, in the latter, it’s Jung’s turn to address unresolved tensions with both parents. Interspersed throughout are short episodes involving visitors to the shop – a local business owner, a young police officer, and so on – all played by the same actor, the very charismatic Brandon McKnight.
Kim’s Convenience is, for the most part, irresistibly sentimental. Much like the sitcom it would inspire, its problems are easily tied up in a bow before the curtain falls, everything resolved with little more than a hug and a few words of encouragement. Any of the bigger societal challenges it hints at – gentrification, racism – are touched on in only glancing ways. Enough to pat ourselves on the back, not enough to think too hard about.
But Kim’s Convenience is sometimes resistibly sentimental, the show setting up sources of major tension – a dramatic falling out between Appa and Jung, for example – only to find easy, simplistic shortcuts out of them. It’s a formula, to be sure, and even though this formula has been working since 2011, there are undoubtedly times where you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes. Choi is very good as Appa – the show has been running long enough that Choi originated the role of the son character – but there’s no escaping that this Convenience is awfully, well, convenient.
Still, the show is nothing if not entertaining. Moment to moment, the dialogue is very funny, and it gets a great deal of mileage out of its likeable leads, particularly Choi (Appa), Seo (Janet), and McKnight (multiple roles, most importantly as Janet’s love interest). Chung (Umma) and Jinn (Jung) are given less to do, and less to work with, though their handful of scenes together work well.
The set is designed with amusing accuracy, from the (now-outdated) green-bannered stacks of Metro News, to the bilingual sound of the lottery machine, to the overflowing junk food racks which, the one note of falseness, strangely lack any Reese’s products. (Perhaps someone in the cast has a peanut allergy?)
Kim’s Convenience also borrows from the best, with a parent-child dynamic – and certain dialogue – calling to mind 1967 comedy-drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, even if Convenience isn’t nearly as insightful. Appa – and I’m hardly the first to observe this – also plays like an Asian-Canadian take on Archie Bunker, the inexplicably popular sitcom dad played by Carroll O’Connor on All in the Family (1971-79).
Like Archie, Appa is, well, kind of clueless and kind of racist in a quasi-forgivable, willing-to-learn-his-lesson, sort of way. Personally, I’ve never understood the appeal of the Archie Bunker “type”, and there are moments here – particularly a poor taste joke about how the one Caribbean-coded Black customer is also a shoplifter – where Convenience leans into the lazy stereotypes it’s meant to subvert. (A later anecdote, about the dynamic between Korean-American shop owners and African Americans during the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, lands better and truer.)
Existing Convenience fans will find plenty to like here, and, heck, will probably get a little teary-eyed revisiting these characters, even if they’re not played by the same cast they know from television/past productions. Newcomers may well wonder what all the fuss is about, though there’s no denying that it’s an entertaining ninety minutes of theatre. If only to partake in one of the great Canadian theatrical success stories, Kim’s Convenience is worth your time.
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Kim’s Convenience runs now through March 9, 2025, at Soulpepper.
