Presented by Melbourne Theatre Company
Funny and energetic performances succeed where a script that gives away its characters’ individuality does not
Review by Fig Vinegar
Arts Centre Melbourne
Until 22nd March, 2025
Tickets: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2025/never-have-i-ever/
Type: Humorous, political, current
If you liked: The Guilty Feminist, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
From Deborah Frances-White of much loved podcast The Guilty Feminist comes a new four-hander styling itself as ”Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the modern era”. A big swing.
Two couples have known each other for several decades. One couple has gone bankrupt in a restaurant venture financially backed by the other, and the four are raiding the wine cellar of the otherwise empty restaurant to mark the occasion, bringing tensions old and new into sharp relief. This is a play boasting funny and energetic performances from actors having to navigate some oddly rhetoric-shaped dialogue that is bordering on didacticism in places, and this somewhat robs us of the chance to properly connect with the characters’ humanity or even individuality.
It’s not that the writing always falls victim to the fate of sounding deliberated over by a playwright, but on the whole it is simply not messy enough to trust, particularly when the characters are meant to have engaged in a bacchanalian consumption of alcohol and cocaine. Despite this, Simon Gleeson and Chika Ikogwe stand out as particularly enjoyable to watch, with the former assuming an air of camp that is satisfactorily undercut by his sinister relationship with power.
The play is a study in the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality in long-standing personal relationships, and to aid this the character design is surgical in its composition- a weirdness not quite offset by the complexity of the ensuing pickles that this places the characters in. The conceit of perceived self-awareness backfiring as a particularly destructive lack of self-awareness does wear thin; there is a limit to the number of times one can laugh out loud at something so genuinely frustrating without the cushion of complete absurdism.
For the first act I find myself unsure who to blame for setting the stakes down somewhere and forgetting to come back for them. Characters make patently outrageous accusations of each other which are met by under-reactions in often distractingly patchy accents. Why did this production need to be set in England? Nothing about the characters or the story was irreplaceably English. The entire thing could have been seamlessly transplanted to Melbourne.
I find myself unsure who to blame for setting the stakes down somewhere and forgetting to come back for them
On the whole this show suffers mostly from a lack of believability, extending even to the gorgeous set that doesn’t quite match the restaurant concept described in the script. However, as much as I hate having to defer to this, I’m acutely aware that there may also be a noteworthy generation gap at play between piece and reviewer. It is a known fact that the critical point of tension for generating cringe is reached when two parties are about half a generation apart; self-respecting early Gen Zs find the antics of late Millennials particularly unbearable because it was their job as their successors to improve on their work.
The things said and done by people 10-15 years your senior have not yet dated enough to have the patina of vintage appeal- it’s unfortunate, but time does make fools of us all. Imprisoned as I am in late-Millennialism, I have difficulty cleaving this part of my identity away from my intimate knowledge of what goes on in the studios of drama schools. Am I repelled by watching people drunkenly belt out Britney Spears’ Toxic for multiple scene transitions simply because it’s daggy, or do I just feel that such a device (among others used) is not worthy of a mainstage production?
On the whole, I feel it does not actually matter either way because I would not be having this reaction to a play seated in the timelessness of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Theatre Thought: How do we best tell stories that reflect the broad political tension of a time without sacrificing characters’ individuality?
Cast & Creatives
Chika Ikogwe Adaego
Simon Gleeson Tobin
Katie Robertson Jacq
Sunny S Walia Kas
Deborah Frances-White Writer
Tasnim Hossain Director
Zoe Rouse Set & Costume Designer
Rachel Lee Lighting Designer
Sidney Millar Composer & Sound Designer
Aubrey Flood Assistant Director
Isabella Vadiveloo Intimacy Coordinator
Mark Wong Voice & Dialect Coach
