REVIEW: Koreaboo - La Boite Theatre

Koreaboo

Presented by: La Boite Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company

Venue: Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite

Date Attended: 5 September, 2026

Written by: Michelle Lim Davidson

Directed by: Jessica Arthur

Cast: Michelle Lim Davidson and Heather Jeong

Photography: Stephen Henry 

“Seoul does not sleep.”

Neither does Soon Hee, by the looks of things. She's the one-woman machine behind a 24-hour convenience store. She takes no days off and has little patience for the Australian girl who's just walked in wanting her attention. Unfortunately for Soon Hee, that girl isn't leaving anytime soon... She's her daughter.

Presented by La Boite Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company as part of Brisbane Festival, Michelle Lim Davidson's Koreaboo follows Korean-born, Australian-raised Hannah (Davidson) as she travels to Seoul to spend time with her biological mother, Soon Hee (Heather Jeong). Hannah arrives carrying years of questions and sky-high expectations, only to find herself getting shooed out of Soon Hee's shop like a stray cat.

So begins an exceptionally funny, heartfelt story about two women who share DNA, a passion for K-pop, and (at first) not much else in common. Writer and actor Michelle Lim Davidson was adopted from South Korea at four months old and raised in Australia, before reuniting with her Korean biological family in 2019. Koreaboo pulls from those experiences, looking beyond the reunion itself to what happens when you actually try to get to know each other.

“Koreaboo” is a usually derogatory term for a non-Korean person who's intensely obsessed with Korean culture. Hannah has grown up in Australia looking unmistakably Korean, only to arrive in South Korea and realise she's now conspicuously Australian. She may as well have ‘foreigner’ tattooed on her forehead.

Michelle Lim Davidson plays Hannah with a jittery eagerness that tells us how badly she wants this trip to go well. Every awkward pause needs filling. She chats, tries to help, attempts to speak Korean, and even busts out the All That Jazz routine from her childhood eisteddfod days. She desperately wants Soon Hee to recognise the Korean parts of her, proudly declaring, “I watch Squid Game WITHOUT the subtitles,” all while relying on a translation app that can barely facilitate a conversation, let alone a mother-daughter reunion.

Heather Jeong as Soon Hee operates on an entirely different frequency. Her delivery is dry, blunt, and gloriously matter-of-fact. The language barrier adds another layer because Soon Hee doesn't waste English words cushioning an insult. “You go now!” becomes a fairly standard response to Hannah's attempts at bonding, like a verbal eject button.

Mel Page's set packs the Roundhouse stage with instant noodles, knick-knacks, garden gnomes, and rows upon rows of colourful Korean snacks. “I like stuff. When I was small we didn't have much. Happy is hard when you are poor.” That line flipped my perspective on the shelves surrounding her. This woman who grew up without much now runs her family's mart crammed to the ceiling with stuff. She works there around the clock and refuses to hand responsibility to anybody else. Then Hannah walks straight into the controlled existence Soon Hee built during all the years they were apart and asks to be included in it.

(Minor spoilers coming up.)

Jessica Arthur's direction and Davidson's writing do not hurry that inclusion. Soon Hee isn't going to open up about the past simply because Hannah has flown thousands of kilometres to ask about it. She recoils from affection, keeps her daughter at a practical distance, and hasn't even told her community that Hannah exists. Initially, I put some of her behaviour down to embarrassment. But Davidson starts filling in the parts of the story Hannah never knew.

“No one told me where my baby go...” Soon Hee was sent to a home for unmarried mothers after falling pregnant outside marriage and has spent years trying to erase from her mind the daughter she never got to raise. “I've tried to forget you,” she eventually tells Hannah. We see Hannah and Soon Hee are grieving the same lost relationship from completely different directions, and neither has the vocabulary for what they're supposed to be to each other now. The revelations get heavier, but Koreaboo never starts behaving as though we're no longer allowed to laugh. Arthur and Davidson keep finding comedy in the pair's awkward attempts to connect. K-pop becomes common ground, which gets us Hannah attempting to turn the Nutbush into a K-pop sensation, Soon Hee dressing her like a Korean pop star (or, as she puts it, “a sexy Asian baby”), and the pair preparing for TV talent show Star Power.

Hannah's pre-performance nerves culminate in the immortal announcement, “I've done three poos.” That exchange had me giggling for days afterwards and became my go-to description whenever I recommended the show to someone. “Uh oh! Poo number four is coming,” Hannah announces, only for Soon Hee to shut that down immediately: “No! There is no more poo!”

The more time Hannah and Soon Hee spend together, the more alike they appear to me. Soon Hee adores American television, gets her English catchphrases from HBO, and likes pretending she's in New York à la Sex and the City. Hannah has her love for K-pop and looks towards South Korea for a piece of herself she feels she's missing. Their scenes have a great push and pull to them. Hannah fills every silence she can find; Soon Hee seems determined to create more of them (usually while throwing in another unsolicited opinion). Davidson's nervous, eager energy keeps colliding with Jeong's dry, matter-of-fact delivery, and that comic mismatch never disappears.

Even when the missing pieces of their history start falling into place, Koreaboo doesn't pack the comedy away. Nervous poo jokes and bad K-pop choreography sit alongside a much sadder picture of the life Soon Hee might have had. Underneath the shopkeeper who's spent years getting on with what she believed was her duty, we start to see the mother she never got to be, and the woman she might have become if she'd been given more choices.

They've lost decades together, and a few packets of ramen aren't going to give them those years back. Cultural differences remain. Generational differences remain. The language barrier certainly remains. But Hannah finally knows why she was adopted, and Soon Hee finally knows the woman her baby grew up to be. They can't fix the missing time as easily as Soon Hee fixes a smoking fridge. By the end, though, they're finally standing in the same room with the real person instead of the one they've spent years imagining.