‘Kim’s Convenience’ at A.C.T. – Don’t naysay this sitcom play

It’s impossible to consider “Kim’s Convenience,” the rib-tickling, heart-stirring comic drama now playing at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, without noting its kinship to television sitcoms. That would be the case even had the play not been the source material for a successful long-running Canadian Broadcasting Company series of the same name (2016-2021), which became a bonafide global hit after being picked up by Netflix.
The play, by the Korean-born Canadian writer Ins Choi, whose script draws on his own family’s experience as immigrants to Toronto in the 1970s, has a small cast, a sentimental streak, broadly appealing character-based humor that leans into archetypes (stern but secretly soft dad; soft but secretly strong Mom; hellion son; daughter with gumption), and primarily takes place in one location.

The show’s single set even does double duty as the sit-com genre’s two favorite settings: a living room and a workplace. The Kim family lives above their convenience store, where most of their domestic drama tends to play out. Set designer Joanna Yu’s work is so realistically detailed that I found myself wondering if the Pringles were past their expiration date.

But the efficiency and familiarity of the stage version of “Kim’s Convenience,” aren’t faults, they’re features, keeping audiences fully entertained while easing their way into unexpected pockets of depth.

Family business
Ins Choi not only wrote this show, he stars as the family patriarch and retail proprietor, called Appa, not a given name, but a Korean word for Father. While endearing, like “Pop,” the term is also unspecific; and the character views himself in kind. A first-generation immigrant, he considers being a father and giving his children opportunity for advancement more important than his role as an individual.

“What is the story of me?” he asks more than once during the play, confused and forlorn. While proudly making sacrificing for his family, Appa has filled his own unconscious well of bitterness. At times, it erupts volcanically, pushing his loved ones away.

Appa’s wife, called Umma, or mother, played by Esther Chung, is a less-distinctly written role. Still, with a lightness in gait and voice, Chung helps us understand that she has tempered much of her own self-abnegation. Umma’s involvement in Christian church, provides a balm, not just through faith, but through a sense of community that extends beyond her family.

The grown Kim kids are both in their 30s. Jung (Ryan Jinn), left home at 16 after a father-son altercation. Like his father, he has a lostness to him; and by play’s end, both men find some of what they’re missing need in reconnecting with each other.

Daughter Janet (Kelly Seo), an aspiring photographer, still lives with her parents above the store and serves as the family diplomat, helping bridge rifts even as she asserts her own sense of independence. Her attraction to Alex (Brandon McKnight, irresistibly goofy and awkward), a childhood friend of Jung’s who’s now a cop on the neighborhood beat, provides some of the show’s giddiest moments. And Appa’s fanning the flame of their romance is at once cringeworthy and awwwww-inducing.

By virtue of her age and position in the family structure, Janet is free to display a wider range of feelings than the other Kims, and Seo flies with the opportunity. Her performance is the show’s least sitcom-like. She seamlessly works her way from emotional peaks to valleys and through everything in between within the show’s swift single act.

As Appa, Choi, is a treasure. His love and respect for the Korean immigrant men of his father’s generation imbues his portrayal, making the audience feel for the character even at his most tyrannical. (In early productions of the play, Choi played Jung, the role that aligns more directly with his own experience).

And when Appa is happy, Choi’s performance is pure cartoon joy. He gives the small businessman endless small stage business: Poking at his adding machine, rearranging cans of energy drinks, imitating his customers, and his daughter, with comically accented impishness.

At only 85 minutes long, “Kim’s Convenience” leaves you wishing you could binge it for days.

‘Kim’s Convenience,’ through Oct. 19. $25-$130. Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St. http://www.act-sf.org