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| Lia Lee and James Yi in Kim’s Convenience (Robert Wade) |
Kim’s Convenience
Taproot Theatre
Through June 22, 2019
You might wonder how a Canadian television show is playing
on stage at Taproot Theatre. They’re presenting Kim’s Convenience. It happens that the play preceded the tv show
and Netflix tv producers loved the idea and turned it into a show and included
the efforts of writer Ins Choi to continue the story started in his play.
In a pre-show talk, Choi described several aspects of the play
that were very intentional. He said that he wasn’t used to seeing a lot of
Koreans on television and most of them were intense and angry and he really
wanted to show humor and lightness. He described his own family as really funny
and cracking each other up.
He also didn’t want to sugarcoat the flaws of the family on
stage. He said there were many Koreans with a lot of prejudices against
non-Koreans. This particular characterization made its way firmly into aspects
of the main character, Appa (father in Korean). It’s not meant to be acceptable;
it’s meant to be true to real, complex individuals.
The play is about a small convenience store and the Kim family
that owns it. While Appa (James Yi)
and Umma (“mother” Annie Yim) came
from Korea, where their lives were very different and we discover that Appa
used to be a school teacher, here they created what they could and built a
well-frequented convenience store to take care of their family. The kids, Jung
(Parker Kennedy) and Janet (Lia Lee), are grown and Jung has left
the family after a major upset some years ago and Janet wants to make her own
choices.
The neighborhood is gentrifying. Mr. Lee (Obadiah Freeman, who plays several
other roles), the “black man with the Asian last name”, comes to offer Mr. Kim
a great offer to buy the store. He’s not likely to keep the store open, he’s
probably going to tear it down and build something else. If the Kims built the
store for their kids, but there are no kids who want it, what then?
David Hsieh, ReAct
Theatre’s artistic director, joined Scott
Nolte to direct this family comedy. Taproot put a lot of thought and heart
into making sure that the cultural aspects ring true and that the spoken Korean
of the two parents was robust and true.
They got some set assistance from a production in Vancouver,
B.C., especially for a lot of the stocked shelf items. And then Mark Lund designed the rest of the
store into Taproot’s space. It’s a well-stocked store, but I wished just a bit
for more specificity of where windows were located, especially toward the front
of the stage. It’s a difficult set of decisions regarding obstructing audience
views, but just a little more structure would have helped.
Appa is definitely not the politically correct character. He
stereotypes who might steal from the store by race and sexual preference. He
thinks his daughter should be married and that he should be the one to approve
her choice of husband. The tv equivalent of this man can only be Archie Bunker,
another bigot that struggled to learn lessons. Yi, as Appa, is the perfect inscrutable
father. He gives little away in his face and moves quickly without warning when
he wants to.
Yim is the loving, but un-wave-making mother. She tries to “manage”
the difficult parts of her husband, but understands his pressures and his
desire to make a successful life for their children. Lee does a great job of
being frustrated with her father, but realizing that she still lives at home
and owes him respect.
Freeman takes on several roles and with the help of some
awkward wigs, pulls off the changes nicely. He’s particularly funny as the old
schoolmate of Jung’s who is now a policeman and maybe a suitor for Janet.
Kennedy doesn’t show up until near the end of this 90-minute
play, but makes the most of it when he does. It’s a poignant moment that is
very much the heart of the play and one that virtually any member of any family
can relate to.
This is a generally family-friendly show, but there are a
few “bad” words and the bigotry that might be confusing for children under
about age 10 to understand, given many children at that age might not
understand why it’s ok for that father to be prejudiced. There’s not a lot of
room for gray in younger children’s understanding.
There are a lot of laughs to be had and maybe some Netflix
watching to be done after seeing where the whole series came from.
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