Hit play heads for Newcastle on first UK tour
Northern Stage the venue for Kim’s Convenience
Playwright and actor Ins Choi can’t have had much inkling of what he had started when his debut play, Kim’s Convenience, opened at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2011 – even though it was judged best new play.
But with Choi also directing and performing, it took off, playing to full houses wherever it was staged and winning critical plaudits.
It toured Canada from 2013 to 2016 and opened in New York, off Broadway, in 2017.
It led to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Netflix series on TV, running for five seasons.
The play had its European premiere in January last year when it opened in London at the Park Theatre with Ins Choi returning to the cast but in a different role.
And now, thanks to Adam Blanshay Productions and Park Theatre, a touring production is due to open at Northern Stage in Newcastle at the end of April.
Billed as “a story of family, tradition and generational change”, the play introduces us to “stubborn but likeable” Mr Kim (Appa) who runs a convenience store with his wife, Mrs Kim (Umma).
Mr Kim hopes the store will provide a secure future for daughter Janet but she wants to be a photographer and isn’t interested.
That, though, is just one of his problems. The area’s being gentrified and there’s the threat of a new supermarket sucking their business away. And then there’s son Jung with whom Appa’s not on speaking terms.
Playing Appa in the touring production is James Yi who returns to a role he performed in America two years ago (he also appeared in the TV series as Jimmy Young, a car dealership owner).
Caroline Donica, who played opposite James in that American production, returns to the role of Appa and both actors are making their UK stage debuts.
The pair are joined on stage by Candace Leung as Umma, Daniel Phung as Jung and Andrew Gichigi as Alex in a production directed by Esther Jun.
Say the producers: “While rooted in the immigrant experience, the play’s themes resonate far beyond any one culture, capturing the tensions and tenderness between parents and children as they navigate the balance between tradition, modernity, and personal ambition.
“Through humour and heart, Kim’s Convenience sheds light on the shared human experience of family, making it a story that speaks to audiences from all backgrounds.”
But just a little more about Ins Choi.
He was born in 1974 in South Korea to a South Korean mother and a father who was born in North Korea but taken across the border (a journey that can’t have been easy) with his family as a baby.
The family emigrated to Canada when Ins was a year old and the story goes that an immigration officer wrongly recorded his name, Insub, as ‘Insurp’ – although at school he started calling himself Danny after John Travolta’s character in Grease.
As a young man, and before his career in theatre took off, Ins worked for a time in convenience stores owned by friends of his parents. He lives in Toronto with his family.
Kim’s Convenience runs from April 29 until May 3 and tickets are on sale via the Northern Stage website.