SEOUL SEARCHING: LA BOITE THEATRE PRESENTS A STORY OF FAMILY AND BELONGING

Griffin Theatre Company’s applauded production of the tender and sharply funny Koreaboo makes its La Boite Theatre debut from 2 to 19 September 2026. 

Navigating culture, language and the peculiar distance between who we hope someone will be and who they actually are, Koreaboo is an original work about belonging, family and what it means to love someone you barely know.

The production follows Hannah, an Australian-Korean woman who travels to Seoul to reconnect with her birth mother, only to find the reunion far more complicated than she’d ever imagined. 

Her Umma works in a convenience store day and night and she seems more interested in stacking shelves and rearranging the garden gnome display than connecting with her long-lost daughter.

Armed with only Google Translate and unrelenting optimism, Hannah tries to find a place in Umma’s world before the end of a sweltering summer.

Koreaboo marks the playwriting debut of acclaimed Australian performer Michelle Lim Davidson (The Newsreader, Utopia, Play School) and is a work of disarming honesty, sharp wit and genuine emotional weight. 

“Behind the neon lights and bling of K-Pop, you get to see people in this extraordinary circumstance,” Davidson, who also stars as Hannah, said. 

“Koreaboo is a story of two women trying to find each other across everything that separates them and it is how the audience finds them, too.

“There is grief in this story and real joy too, alongside a lot of comedy that comes from the particular absurdity of meeting someone who is family and a stranger at the same time.”

Davidson performs alongside Heather Jeong, whose appearance in the 2025 Griffin season marked her stage debut after a career as a chef. 

Jeong brings an unguarded freshness to the production that drew significant attention when it premiered and her presence on stage continues to be one of the work’s most talked-about elements. 

“There is a key throughline in this story about showing up as yourself even when the situation is bigger than you expected,” Jeong said.

“That’s what makes this production so powerful, I’ve had to find my own way into the truth of each scene and that’s reflected in the character I bring to the stage.” 

Koreaboo director Jessica Arthur said the production follows a story that earns its emotional weight through comedy rather than in spite of it. 

“Michelle has written something that is genuinely difficult to categorise and that is exactly what makes it so powerful,” Arthur said.

“It makes you laugh and then catches you by surprise; it’s funny in the way that life is funny when the stakes are high and nothing is going the way you planned.

“But at the heart of it, it asks its audience to sit with the discomfort and the joy of loving someone across a divide you can’t quite close.”

The production features dramaturgy by Julian Larnach, design by Mel Page, composition and sound design by Brendon Boney and lighting design by Kate Baldwin.

Koreaboo plays La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre from 2 to 19 September 2026, with its opening night on Saturday 5 September.