Review: ‘Kim’s Convenience’ Shares Family Ties, for Better and Worse

Open all Hours, has finally been topped for us. "Kim's Convenience" writers and cast, thank you for a real winner!

Just saw it, Ins Choi did a great job writing this play and the cast was fantastic.

I wish I could see this performance. I've seen the show in Ontario and it's teh kind of show that gets better with a second look.
I had the opportunity to record a podcast with the show's writer. Ins Choi, who also appears in the New Your production.
The podcast is available here: http://theinadequatelife.com/writer-actor-ins-choi-remastered/

What a shame Jesse Green spends sooo long decrying what he views as overly familiar and formulaic (sitcom-ish) before admitting that "Kim's Convenience" moved him to tears and laughter of recognition. But why say that so late, after casual readers have likely moved on from what appears to be a simple thumbs down?
The freshness of the show comes from its subversion of well-worn archetypes of the recent immigrant variety, showing painful realities alongside hilarious incorrectness. Yes, it trades in well-worn tropes aka commonalities. And no, it's not like NY audiences are over-run with content about Korean-North American experience. Hopefully audiences will discover the show for themselves, against bogus objections from a review spending much too long getting over itself.

Jesse Green’s review of “Kim’s Convenience” seems bent on proving New York sophistication at the cost of comprehending the play. “Even if the setup weren’t so rote, Mr. Choi’s script invites déjà vu with dialogue and behavior that work slight variations on hoary comic templates.” Really? In my experience, especially cross-culturally, some appeal to known quantities is required in comedy in order for a script to be understood and enjoyed. That Choi’s script accomplishes a fresh take on immigrant experience—Honestly and as he vaguely acknowledges, how many authentic contemporary Korean plays exist?—is without question. I don’t understand why Green spends the first two-thirds of his review complaining: about how much Appa reminds him of the exceedingly dominant-culture Archie Bunker, or describing Umma as “mom” entering “paroxisms of hennishness”. Moments of maternal worry, sure. Paroxisms? No.
I appreciated Green’s ultimate personal connection to the story and the way this, finally, helped him receive the play. But it would have been a more honest review had he not spent nearly all his column inches panning it as “sitcomish,” “rote,” and from “kitschland” before finally admitting his own experience of recognition. By the time readers have worked through the first few paragraphs of negativity, it'll be impressive if they keep reading all the way to the sentimental culmination of Mr. Green’s approval.
Best to go experience the beautiful "Kim's Convenience" for yourself.

I hope the NY Times will review Soulpepper's production of "Of Human Bondage". I saw it this past week and it was magnificent. (No lesser word will suffice.) It deserves all the publicity it can get.

Oops. Just saw that you did (positively) review it, after all.

Funny (perverse) that reviewers scorn familiar narrative frameworks when they appear in the stories of under-represented groups. This seems an abuse of deconstruction.

Many a course in western (white male) literature teaches us about the underlying archetypes of the epic tradition -- from Homer to Virgil, Cervantes, and Joyce. But narrative tradition doesn't end on the printed page.

On screen, the Coen brothers produced that familiar arc with O Brother. Their hilarious addition to the canon was greeted with two Oscar nominations. Famously, Lucas cribbed notes from Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" to construct the Star Wars franchise.

Takes one hell of a lot of privilege to use reductionist familiarity to cudgel an experience that moved one to tears. Seems this reviewer needs a re-write to make this too familiar arc of insensitivity into something that's 'good enough.'

The first season of the TV series on the CBC was lovely. It's amazing how CBC Television manages to revive itself under a friendlier Prime Minister. All is right with the Canadian world at least.

I haven't (yet) seen the play but I am looking forward to Season 2 of the CBC sitcom.

This play has been an overwhelming success in Toronto and elsewhere. Although I have seen many plays, often more "serious", I recall this one for its lively performances and a script which many can empathize. It is a pity that the reviewer takes such a condescending attitude to a production which eventually brought him to tears.

So it's cliche and sentimental until and unless it reflects the critic's own life and background? Personally, I've never encountered a play or novel based on the drama of Korean-American small entrepreneurs with a father/daughter dynamic at its center. The critic's provincialism and lack of scope is narcissistic and regrettable.

Grateful we now have your insights and quality writing at the Times.

This review is an object lesson in why I have come to loathe theater criticism as it is practiced at the New York Times and all too many other outlets. In an age in which the Times finds kids' comic books, violent video games, inane television shows and, God help us, rap music to be high art forms worthy of serious attention, why is it that Mr. Greene and his colleagues find it necessary to go to elaborate ends to assure their readers that they are way too hip to be taken in by "sitcoms" and "sentiment"? May I suggest that if Mr. Greene and his fellow critics are "too theatrically sophisticated to embrace [honest emotion] without ambivalence" they have no business going to the theater, let alone reviewing it.

It is a pleasure to read a Times theater (or film) review which is so honest, unpretentious and reflective of how an actual audience member would react.