Images: Stephen Henry
It’s often fascinating to hear others’ life stories, through a conversation, a book, a song or, in this case, a theatre show. Drawing inspirations from her own experience of inter-country adoption, Michelle Lim Davidson’s debut play, Koreaboo, opens a rare, personal window onto life’s most complex cross-cultural relationships. Running at La Boite Theatre as part of the 2026 Brisbane Festival, its opening night landed right in the thick of the festival's opening weekend buzz, coinciding with the city’s massive Riverfire celebrations, setting the stage for emotional fireworks inside the Roundhouse.
The entire play centred on just two main characters, following the reunion of a Korean-born Australian adoptee Hannah (Lim Davidson), and her long-lost biological mother, Soon Hee (Heather Jeong). Hannah has travelled all the way from Sydney to Seoul in the hope of seeking the closure she expected to find, only to open new questions about their relationship, culture and identity.
As someone who was rooting for a big fairytale ending and the sweet make-up of lost years between mother and daughter, it turned out to be not what I anticipated. Admittedly, at times the pacing felt slow and dragged for me, with the repetition of some emotional beats. Yet, this structural repetition could also be read as a deliberate commitment to unvarnished realism. Hannah and Soon Hee were related by blood, but they were ultimately strangers navigating deep linguistic and cultural divides. Leaning into the estrangement, the script authentically captured the messy, exhausting push-and-pull dynamics of two characters trying to become umma (mother in korean) and daughter. Their back-and-forth friction, such as navigating sudden emotional walls in the mart, bounded between rejection and tentative reconciliation so frequently that the narrative occasionally trod water before reaching its ultimate destination. While it made for a dramatically demanding 80 minutes that tested my endurance, it also anchored the characters' struggle in a messy, lived-in truth rather than an easy theatrical resolution.
Images: Stephen Henry
The production truly shone in its design and performances. Much of the action took place in the mart, or what the show playfully dubbed a ‘K-mart’. The detailed convenience set grounded the play in a hyper-realistic space, complete with a counter, snack shelves, a drink fridge, a sunglasses rotating rack, stools, and posters under harsh, bright white store lighting. It served as both a practical workplace and a physical shield for Soon Hee, acting as an escape from her complex past pain and deep-seated guilt. The play touched on both the heaviness of complex emotions and light-hearted momentum. Alongside a shared love of K-pop as a cultural touchstone, it gave the two actors space to showcase brilliant comic timing, body language, and stage presence alongside raw vulnerability.
Jeong expertly balanced Soon Hee's guarded defensiveness with repressed creative energy, while Davidson grounded Hannah's desperate attempts for an identity in palpable longing to spend time with her umma—which included dressing in a bow dress and lacy knee-high socks that accidentally made her ‘look like a toddler’. Their dynamic transformed what could have been straightforward melodrama into a nuanced, deeply human portrait of cross-cultural reconnection, showing the raw, awkward distance between two people who barely know each other. I could see the audience thoroughly invested in seeing what happened next, leaning forward from their chairs and cracking up at the jokes.
Koreaboo is an intriguing premise brought to life with impressive craft. Lim Davidson channelled deeply personal experiences into an earnest, resonant piece. Although the production could benefit from a touch of structural trimming, it undeniably carves out an essential space in the Australian landscape, speaking to cross-cultural displacement in a way that resonates widely. It is a work well worth developing further and sharing on stages across the country. As the story ultimately reminds us, while we can never turn back the clock to fix what is broken, we can choose to show up for the fragile, imperfect connections we still hold in the present.
Koreaboo plays 2-19 September 2026 at the La Boite Theatre, Kelvin Grove 6 as part of the 2026 Brisbane Festival.
Images: Stephen Henry
