Do you remember that old joke: how many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?* It’s a bit of a tired one, which was later developed and then deconstructed brilliantly by Hannah Gadsby.
There’s no need to go further into that here, suffice to say making art that is both feminist and funny isn’t easy, but it’s a fantastic thing when you pull it off. Not to mention doing so while also diving deeply into the actual meaning of the word ‘woke’ and proving how, like ‘politically correct’ before it, it has been maligned and manipulated by those who who think the very idea of being inclusive and considerate of everyone is somehow a bad thing deserving of scorn.
Deborah Frances-White is probably best known as the host of the podcast The Guilty Feminist, but she’s also done stand-up, written a film screenplay and acts – with a strong background in improvisation. Oh and another claim to fame is convincing Phoebe Waller-Bridge to get on stage and try monologuing (which we can probably all agree turned out pretty well).
Having grown up in Brisbane and moved to the UK as a young woman, Frances-White has a hybrid sense of humour that juxtaposes larger than life larrikinism with a finely tuned sense of how to skewer English pretension and social mores. And she’s put this to excellent use in the play Never Have I Ever, which premiered in the Chichester Festival in the UK in 2023 and is now featured in Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2025 season. Proving that adage about great minds, in June this year WA’s Black Swan is also producing a version of it, directed by Kate Champion.
If your image of a four-hander veers from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf via Closer to God of Carnage, Never Have I Ever is probably closer to the former, with the brutal humour of the latter and touching on some of the themes of sexual infidelity of the one in the middle.
The play revolves around two couples, Jacq (Katie Robertson) and Kas (Sunny S Walia), and Adaego (Chika Ikogwe) and Tobin (Simon Gleeson). As the play begins Jacq is in the kitchen of her empty London restaurant cooking a special meal. She and Kas have invited their friends to dinner to let them know they’re bankrupt and Tobin’s investment in the restaurant has gone up in smoke.
Tobin, however, doesn’t react as expected and the evening progresses with much merriment, a few lines of cocaine and lots of drinking, before someone suggests the party game that gives the play its title. And it’s here that the roadblocks to the conviviality raise their heads, as secrets are revealed, feathers get well and truly ruffled and the characters’ true natures and suppressed feelings about each other come marching out in all their glory.
Race, class, gender… you name it, the zeitgeist’s hot topics get a thorough working over and Frances-White has plenty to say about all of them. But, thankfully for an audience, she manages to make all of those points without losing the funny. There are some really top notch comic one-liners in this play, and with the tight reins of director Tasnim Hossain and perfectly timed delivery of her excellent cast, pretty much every one lands as a zinger.
Hossain has chosen to keep the London setting, which also has an influence on the accents of the cast, the most impressive of which belongs to Ikogwe. She may be Nigerian born and NIDA trained, but you’d swear she took the Tube to get to the theatre.
The script requires more than a modicum of drunk acting, which can often be where the credibility crashes to the ground in a production, but not so here. At least, that is until the moment when the first bombshell is dropped and everyone seems to (believably) sober up pretty quickly.
This is a terrific night at the theatre – witty, timely and with more than enough meat beneath the gags to give you something to take away and argue about with your companions, colleagues and, especially, old university friends, if you have them.
Read: Musical review: Hadestown, Theatre Royal Sydney
The one element that would have made it even better for this reviewer would have been turning on the stovetop in the opening scene and letting us appreciate the aromas of the Turkish dish Jacq is preparing. This feels like such a missed opportunity. The sense of smell is such a neglected one in the theatre and, when on those rare occasions it is incorporated, it can be incredibly powerful and evocative. An example is the smell of the rich earth used in [Theatre de] Complicité’s The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, which featured in the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 1995. Yes, that’s a long time ago, but doesn’t that only go to prove just how memorable it was?
* As a feminist, I’m not gifting you the punchline here. Google it if you must…
Never Have I Ever, Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
Writer: Deborah Frances-White
Director: Tasnim Hossain
Set and Costume Designer: Zoe Rouse
Lighting Designer: Rachel Lee
Composer and Sound Designer: Sidney Millar
Assistant Director: Aubrey Flood
Intimacy Coordinator: Isabella Vadiveloo
Voice and Dialect Coach: Mark Wong
Cast: Chika Ikogwe, Simon Gleeson, Katie Robinson, Sunny S Walia
Never Have I Ever is running at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne until 22 March 2025. For information about the Black Swan production running 14 June to 6 July at the Heath Ledger Theatre.
