Skip to main content

Kim’s Convenience

The Pavilion, Glasgow

Three stars

 

All life walks through Kim’s Convenience, the Toronto based corner shop that gives Ins Choi’s play its title. Best known to many from its Canadian Broadcasting Company TV adaptation that ran for five series between 2016 and 2021, and which can still be found on Netflix, Choi’s 201l template set the tone by putting a Korean immigrant and his increasingly westernised family at its centre. 

 

Where Appa (Korean for ‘dad’) works all hours holding court from behind the counter, Umma (‘mum’) quietly keeps the family together. Their daughter Janet has ambitions to be a photographer, while estranged son Jung can only communicate with his mother at church. The shop may be at the heart of the local community, but with Janet looking set to embark on a fine romance with local cop Alex and everything else going on besides, it doesn’t look like Appa will have anyone to leave his empire to any time soon. Jung, however, might just beg to differ. 

 

What emerges over the play’s seventy-five minutes is an everyday meditation on inter generational relationships, cultural traditions, and navigating through a brave new world in which Appa and Umma’s offspring have never known anything different. James Yi throws in a few martial arts moves to go with it as Appa in this touring revival of Esther Jun’s production, which sets out its store - literally - on Mona Camille’s forensically observed shop interior.

 

While fans of the TV show will recognise some of the scenarios and dramatic tics that began life on stage, Choi’s longer form original has more space to breathe, and the duologues that emerge similarly combine seriousness and underlying warmth. 

 

As Appa, Yi is the pivot on which the play hangs. Candace Leung’s Umma is a loyal pragmatist, while Caroline Donica and Andrew Gichigi make a sweet couple as Janet and Alex. Daniel Phung is a redemptive prodigal as Jung in a show that is very much a family affair. 


The Herald, May 12th 2025

 

Ends 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...