Theatre 2022: Soulpepper - Bad Parent, My Ex-Boyfriend's Yard Sale

My husband Rich and I were amongst one of the first theatre lovers to discover and enjoy Ins Choi’s now famous play Kim’s Convenience. We stumbled upon it quite by accident during the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival where it had its theatrical debut. That year, we had purchased a 10-pack of tickets that we could redeem at the location of each show that we selected to watch.  Usually, we could stroll up about 15-20 minutes before the start of the show, get our tickets, join the line and be ushered in shortly after. For the Kim’s Convenience showing, we misread the time of the show and ended up getting there over an hour before the start. To our surprise, there was already a long lineup waiting to get in and when we went to redeem our tickets, we found out that we had scored the last two tickets for the show and that it was sold out for the rest of the run!  Word of mouth had made this the hottest ticket of the festival and we were lucky enough to be a part of that.

The play Kim’s Convenience is Choi’s sweet, semi-autobiographical comedy about a Korean immigrant family that owns and runs a convenience store in Moss Park, Toronto.  The cast for the Fringe show included Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as “Appa”, the fierce head of the family, Jean Yoon as the matriarch “Umma”, Esther Jun as daughter Janet and Ins Choi himself playing the estranged son Jung.  After its success at the Fringe Festival, the play got picked up and remounted in 2012 by Soulpepper with all the main actors reprising their roles.  The show continued to be part of the Soulpepper repertoire for several more years.  We watched this version in 2014 and enjoyed it just as much the second time, even though only Paul Sun-Hyung remained in the role of Appa at that point.

In 2016, the play was further adapted into a Canadian TV sitcom running on CBC for 5 seasons. The show was filmed in Toronto and the storefront, decked out with the “Kim’s Convenience” sign could be found at 252 Queen East during its run.  Even more exciting for us was the fact that our good friend's brother had a recurring, supporting role on the show, as one of Appa's friends who would frequent the store. We watched all the seasons of the TV series until it was unceremoniously canceled in 2021.  Unfortunately, it ended without being able to properly resolve all the plotlines, including the reconciliation between Jung and Appa that gave the original play its heart.

Thus, we were quite excited to hear that Ins Choi had written a new play that is on the Soulpepper lineup for their 2022 season.  We were prepared to buy tickets to watch this play when Soulpepper made an announcement about their ticket price policies.  Probably due to a slow post-COVID return to live theatre for many regular patrons, the company has decided to slash all its ticket prices almost by half.  Now tickets will range from $65 down to $25 for the season.  For those people (like us) who had already purchased tickets at full price, Soulpepper was offering either a refund, or two free tickets to another show.  We happily converted this offer into tickets to see Choi’s new endeavour.

Continuing with the old adage to “write what you know”, Choi’s new play Bad Parent is a two-hander dealing with a married couple’s struggles adjusting to life with their first child, now a 24-month-old toddler. It draws heavily from Ins and wife Mari’s own past experiences and difficulties raising their children.  The actors Josette Jorge and Raugi Yu portray the harried new parents, Nora, a proficient career woman and Charles, an unsettled man-child and wannabe rock star. It is probably pure coincidence, but hearing these names immediately brought to my mind the characters from the classic movie “The Thin Man” who were named Nick and Nora Charles. The baby, named “Mountain”, (symbolizing strength to Charles, but sounding like a wrestler to Nora) is never seen on stage but his loud, anguished wails are heard from off-stage throughout the show.

Jorge and Yu each also play a second role, acting as a character foil to the original character as well as a sounding board for the other parent. Norah, (with an “h”), is the Filipino nanny hired to look after Mountain so that Nora can return to work.  Norah is the perfect housewife, mother and cook, having no problems with coaxing little Mountain to sleep in his own bed.  This is a feat that has so far eluded Nora, who feels much more comfortable and competent in her professional job than she does as a mother. At the office, Nora confides her troubles to co-worker Dale, questioning why it is so much easier to deal with and to talk to him than to Charles. Dale sagely replies that since they are just colleagues, they can present their best versions of themselves to each other, and that their relationship is easier since they don’t love each other and if things get tense, they can always just leave and return to their mutual offices.

Bad parent uses the common theatre device of “breaking the 4th wall” by having the main characters address the audience. But as Rich put it, they don’t just break the 4th wall, they demolish it.  Nora and Charles start the show by bringing microphones up to the front of the stage as if they were doing a stand-up comedy act, and speaking in turn, they describe how they first met, fell in love, got married and had their baby.  From there, the arguments between the pair escalate as the pressures of their lives mount and the cracks in their marriage start to show.  Through it all, they continue to lobby the audience for support as each is trying to gain our approval for their position.  This is taken the extreme when at one point Nora pointedly asks anyone in the audience who thinks she is wrong to raise his or her hand.  One brave man in the row in front of us does so and she disparages him in her rant. You are left to wonder whether he is a plant, or what would have happened if no one had raised their hand (although Rich told me later that he was tempted to do so himself).

After a while, you realize that the audience is a stand-in for society as a whole, and what Nora and Charles crave is external affirmation, whether from friends, family, strangers, or even from the audience, that they are not the bad parents they each fear they are. Nora recalls the incident where she is bottle-feeding Mountain in the park and is chastised by a stranger for not breast-feeding, which she could not for physiological reasons, but Charles did not step up to defend her. It is clear that they are each deeply affected by what others might think of them. Towards the end of the play, they even accuse each other of pandering to the audience, and then both admit that this is exactly what they are doing.  When they finally take off their “public persona masks” and get real with each other, we hear the real version of how they actually met, and it is much less glamorous than what was initially described.

Bad Parent is a very relatable play with a few comedic moments, presented in a smart, interesting way that led to some good discussions and analysis after Rich and I watched it.  But it is not the feel-good comedic gem that Kim’s Convenience was. There is only so long that you can listen to two people yell at each other before it begins to feel a bit oppressive and depressing.  As they battle over child-rearing techniques, division of labour, unpreparedness to be parents, loss of self-worth and identity, and whether their own bad parents make them doomed to be bad parents themselves, it becomes clear that parenthood is difficult and there is no manual on how to make it work.  

It is really great that Ins Choi’s plays have provided much needed work for Asian actors. Unlike Kim’s Convenience which was specifically representing a Korean immigrant family, Bad Parent’s tale is universal and can be recognized by everyone, so to have two Asian actors play the roles in a Soulpepper production is all the more gratifying.

The show that we had already purchased tickets at full price was the one-woman show called “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale”.  We first bought tickets to watch this comedy in May 2020, but then the pandemic forced the entire run to be canceled before it even started, and our money was refunded.  Over 2 years later, we are finally able to watch it.  I mistakenly thought the title was “My Ex-Boyfriend’s Yard Sale”, implying the protagonist was selling items from a single ex-boyfriend. I imagined a comedic rant about a relationship gone sour, and the cathartic rite of dumping his stuff (at a profit, no less).  The concept of purging remnants of a former romantic relationship reminds me of a previous piece of performance art that we saw during Nuit Blanche 2008.  Titled “Smash It”, the artist tossed items from a past love affair down to the ground from atop a raised cherry picker, then came down and smashed them further with a sledgehammer, all while giving running commentary about what she was destroying and why.

As it turns out, The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale refers to eight items that the show’s author and performer Haley McGee retained from eight different relationships that she had from age 16 to 32.  As an unemployed Canadian actress in major debt while living in London, England, Haley was desperate to generate income while still being able to ply her trade as a working theatrical performer.  She thought of holding a yard sale but realized that all items in her possession that had any monetary value were given to her by ex-boyfriends.  These included a “mixed tape”, necklace, jewelry box, ukulele, vintage typewriter, t-shirt, backpack and bicycle.  But selling these mementos would only result in one-time income and would probably not fetch amounts that reflect her own sentimental valuations of them.  Instead, she came up with the idea of developing a show about selling her exes’ gifts, in which she explains how she developed a mathematical formula to put a price tag on each item, and by extension, allowed her to assign a monetary value on the relationship that each article symbolized. In short, this show tries to create a formula to evaluate “the cost of love”.

McGee’s formula is complex with many variables that fall into the following main categories: Market Value, Time Invested, Narrative Impact, Relationship Index and Wild Cards.  Two factors within the Market Value category required audience participation. As people wandered into the theatre, they were given the opportunity to go up on stage and provide estimates of how much they would spend on each object if it were offered at a yard sale.  The estimates were tallied and later in the show, it was revealed what the average audience estimate was for each item, ranked from lowest to highest.  Haley then provided narratives for the items, explaining how and why she received them, polling the audience afterwards to determine whether an item rose or declined in value after being presented in context.

Speaking non-stop in rapid succession while racing around at a frantic pace, McGee built up and presented her formula with the use of some innovative staging that included scrawling notes on large sheets of brown parcel paper hung on the back wall of the stage, triggering charts to drop from the rafters, opening side and trap doors to reveal more lists, and having special delivery envelopes traverse down a zip line from the back of the theatre onto the stage.  After completing her explanations of the various parts, Haley’s grand finale involves writing out the entire lengthy formula from start to finish, seemingly without needing to take a breath.

Overall, this was an impressive tour de force performance of a memorable show with a very interesting premise.  A few gimmicks did not quite work well though.  Part of the narratives of the items included recorded interviews with the actual ex-boyfriends, which were played aloud on stage.  Unfortunately, some of the voices were muffled and it was difficult to hear.  As Haley’s explanations grew more and more complex and frenzied, she matched this with her actions which included wrapping herself up with the paper on the wall and a big sheet of bubble wrap, holding it all together with masking tape.  There might have been a point to this, but if so, I missed it.  The craziness took my attention away from the ideas that she was trying to convey.  McGee has published a book by the same name as the play (available at the Toronto Public Library), which gives more insight into her life, relationships and the development of the formula and this show.