Review: ‘Kim’s Convenience’ Serves Easy Laughs, but Emotional Depth Is Out of Stock

Kim’s Convenience runs at the Huntington Theatre through Nov. 30.

The comedy theater performance of Kim’s Convenience -- that most are familiar with from the hit TV series by the same name -- perhaps sticks a little too closely to the script.

Directed by Weyni Mengesha and written by Ins Choi – who also stars as Appa in the performance – the play is about a Korean family-run corner store in Toronto. Although it is pleasant to see a  Korean-Canadian immigrant family’s story represented on stage, the play feels too much like the popular TV sitcom’s feel-good show. This ease, however, comes at the expense of depth. It thus misses opportunities to develop more complex themes about parent-child relationships in immigrant families, which is superficially presented as a central theme.

The father, Mr. Kim (played by Ins Choi), and his wife (Esther Chung) have run the convenience store for decades, with the help of their Canadian-born children Janet (Kelly Seo) and Jung (Ryan Jinn). Clashes between Mr. Kim and his children are at times explosive, but often diffused with humor and quickly brushed over in this comedy-drama.

Joanna Yu’s set design was excellent when this reviewer attended the play, bringing the audience into the interior of a meticulously replicated neighborhood convenience store. The acting was warm, animated, and convincing. The play successfully translated into theater the humorous interactions between Mr. Kim and his customers that made the TV show so beloved. Adam Blanshay Productions presents the Soulpepper Theatre Company production in association with American Conservatory Theater.

"Kim's Convenience" at the Huntington Theatre. Courtesy photo by Dahlia Katz

Kim’s Convenience has traveled from the stage format, first produced as part of the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, to the medium of hit sitcom as a five-series CBC and Netflix TV show, and now back to its birthplace of the stage. Even though this show is based on the original play version, in 2025, this version misses the potential strengths that a 90-minute theater format could bring. Instead, it still feels too much like the TV sitcom format – keeping things light and watchable as a comfort show on in the background – instead of taking risks when adapting the script to theater: a full-stage, full-body sensorial format in which the audience’s attention is fully dedicated to the unfolding drama.

Throughout the play, the characters remain underdeveloped and undergo little change. Instead, they are mired in decades-long familial tensions. These are represented as squabbles and silences always eventually diffused by humor and at times inexplicable reconciliation. The 90 minutes of Kim’s Convenience are a never-ending present that both the Kim family and the audience must endure for potentially decades. The eternal in media res of the sitcom translated one to one for the stage makes for solid comedic theater, but not necessarily theater of depth or complexity.

It is significant that a Korean-Canadian immigrant family’s story takes center stage, and has done so since 2011. ClassicalFM has hailed the show as “the most successful Canadian play of the last decade.” Playwright Ins Choi calls Kim’s Convenience “my love letter to my Appa and Umma, and to all first-generation immigrants who end up making a foreign land, home.”

Yet there are many missed opportunities in the play for complexity and depth in addressing conflicts and trauma in immigrant families, which the play largely boils down to intergenerational parent-child differences in values and emotional expressions. The children say “I love you.” The parents do not. Yet the core tensions are not always so simple in real life Asian-American families. In the play, the patriarch’s explosive anger remains intact; concepts of parental sacrifice and the child’s obligations are only superficially touched on; and the mother (Umma) is flat as a character, despite the matriarchal work she does in the family and running the store. The core tensions between the family members are only superficially explored, especially the father-son dynamic, which is addressed by an implausible Deus ex machina by the end. The last scene is when things feel like they are just starting to cook, and by the time the curtain falls, it is clear that this play adaptation is not necessarily meant to cook. Instead, the purpose is to entertain, mollify, and provide light laughs.

The script has a militant commitment to feel-good comedy. At times, the audience is allowed to peek into the inner worlds of the family members, but these moments are quickly brushed over with humor or someone entering the store. It is as if the show has a phobia to any mode except its default of light humor. What would be the cost of actually asking questions about the enduring scars from post-immigration family experiences, as well as the spiritual elisions between parents and children, which sometimes are never resolved? Further, gentrification is a real issue many Asian immigrant families across North America – including in Boston Chinatown – are facing, but in the show is not treated with depth.

The story takes place in Toronto, from the perspective of one Korean-Canadian immigrant family. And yet the relationship between the family and the community – which is more thoroughly explored in the TV series, which has the benefit of more screen time – remains largely ungrounded. Mr. Kim (Appa)’s insistence that the community needs the store is told but not shown. It was also disappointing that one of the main interactions between Mr. Kim and a Jamaican-Canadian customer was one of violence, conflict, and mutual racism; although these cross-cultural slippages and conflicts are a real part of Asian immigrant experiences and real life, as well as a key part of the TV adaptation’s charm and humor, the “cozy racism” shown on stage for laughs feels slightly ungrounded and unsettling.

To its credit, Boston’s Asian-American theater company Chuang Stage hosted an Asian Joy Night for Kim’s Convenience in partnership with the Huntington on Nov. 6. Together, they hosted a pre-show mixer with free food from Asian-owned businesses, as well as pay-as-you wish tickets (including free tickets). In an effort to engage immigrant and pan-Asian communities in Boston, Chuang stage has been hosting Asian Joy Nights for various Asian American Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian theater productions in Boston – including for The Ceremony and Lizard Boy this season.