Kim's convenience play
We watched the Kim’s Convenience play in SF. I am still struggling with the calculus of spending 2 hours in a car (or 2 hours in a train and 30 minutes in someone elses car) to see 1.5 hours of content, but I really enjoy theatre and in this case it was worth it!
This is a comedy about a Korean convenience store owner in Toronto and his struggles with family. He has a daughter who does not want to take over his store, and a son who no longer talks to him after having a falling out. He does have a big community of locals he serves and a big grudge against everything remotely Japanese.
Here is the set from the play
Here is our store!
It later inspired the netflix show which I have not seen. I found a lot of the parts (immigration, owning a convenience store) to be really relatable to me since I had the same upbringing. I loved the small moments like guessing whether a customer would steal or not steal based on their appearance (which kinda went into causal racism but they played with it), or when he prepared the scratcher tickets behind a glass case, or when he first opened the door to take in the day’s newspapers. I had done a lot of those things in my time so it was super entertaining.
It also had a lot of Korea specific aspects (church, korean history) I could not relate to, but have observed in other movies like Minari. Overall it was a decently packed play that did not overstay its welcome and delivered a bunch of feelings and a fair bit of humor.