Michelle Lim Davidson’s heartfelt playwriting debut is a story of inter-country adoption, imperfect motherhood, the search for home, and how we try to understand ourselves by understanding where we come from.

Koreaboo is set over one summer in Seoul. A year after meeting her birth mother for the first time, Korean adoptee Hannah (Davidson) has returned to spend more time getting to know her. But her Umma (Heather Jeong ) works every day, running the convenience store much like her own mother did. She seems to have little interest in bonding with her Australian daughter.

But as Hannah and Umma try to bridge gaps generational and cultural, they find common ground in popular culture: Umma watches Sex and the City to practise English; Hannah loves Korean pop music. The audience witnesses these two almost-strangers, mother and daughter, attempting affection and connection in their own ways, spiralling towards understanding and a tentative relationship built on real shared memories.

Heather Jeong and Michelle Lim Davidson in Koreaboo. Photo © Stephen Henry

Directed by Jessica Arthur, with dramaturg Julian Larnach, Koreaboo was first produced by Griffin Theatre Company in mid-2025 and developed through the Griffin Studio program. Lim Davidson drew on experiences from her own life, describing the work in her program note as “imagined from reality”. The play takes its name from a slang term for foreigners who become obsessed with and romanticise Korean culture, such as cultural dress, K-pop and K-dramas.

The action takes place primarily in the convenience store as Umma and Hannah prepare to appear on a national televised talent contest they have entered on a whim. Although this is an unexpected plot pivot, late-night “rehearsals” among the shelves expand the dynamic between their characters as they laugh, argue and discover more about one another.

Hannah is anxious to please, and the play discusses her experience of feeling too Korean in Australia and too Australian in Korea, a sense of in-between identity that informs her own cautious attitude towards motherhood. To a lesser extent, Hannah seeks information about her deceased father, although the culmination of this narrative thread is a disappointing, sepia-drenched narration of past events that none of the onstage characters had witnessed.

Heather Jeong and Michelle Lim Davidson in Koreaboo. Photo © Stephen Henry

Design by Mel Page includes an immaculate, colourful display of snacks, drinks and miscellaneous items in Umma’s store, matching bedazzled aprons, and cutesy idol-inspired fashions that Hannah adopts in an attempt to please Umma and fit in.

Lighting design by Kate Baldwin evokes the fluorescent lighting of the convenience store and pulses during scene transitions. Composition and sound design by Brendan Boney include a soundtrack of K-pop and upbeat backing for scene transitions.

Lim Davidson’s Hannah is tearfully sensitive to what she sees as her birth mother’s disinterest while brimming with cheerful attempts to connect over music, storytelling, favourite colours… anything she can grasp to understand herself by attempting to understand Umma. Jeong  – who made her stage debut in the original Griffin Theatre production – is endearingly sweet and blunt as Umma, delivering much of the play’s comedy through her character’s flippant observations and emphatic opinions.

Koreaboo enjoys its share of absurd comedy and melodrama, but resists a neat ending or easy resolution. The play honours the complexity of these unique relationships and remarks that finding one another is only the beginning; getting to know one another is the real work.

Koreaboo plays at the Roundhouse Theatre until 19 September before playing Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, from 24 September–10 October.