Review: NEVER NOT ONCE, Park Theatre

Eleanor (Meaghan Martin) is the daughter of Allison (Flora Montgomery) and Nadine (Amanda Bright). Conceived by Allison on a one-night-stand before meeting her future life partner, the gifted college girl drives back home with her boyfriend Rob to find out who her real father is. They track down the potential match and briefly destroy their family balance.

While Allison has always hidden behind not remembering anything about the man and isn't too happy about Eleanor's mission, Nadine supports it fully, unveiling Allison's knot of lies. Carey Crim's Never Not Once might have won the Jane Chambers Award for Feminist Writing and been a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Award in the States, but blatantly lacks subtlety and is full of cringeworthy exchanges.

The single ideas in the play are noble and serious, but the result is a rushed race to the finish line. The characters are cut-out figurines built with the aim of creating the perfect picture to make a point. Nadine is an aeroespace engineer contracted to NASA who goes to church every Sunday; Allison is an independent shop owner who dresses extravagantly.

Eleanor is supposedly a mix of her two mums with her father's eyes, but has a bland, anaemic personality. Her boyfriend Rob (Gilbert Kyem Jnr) is a cheeky, swaggering, almost-frat boy whom Eleanor saved from embarrassment on campus, while her dad Doug (Adrian Grove) is a cold ex-frat-boy-turned-analyst who has a lot to be forgiven for.

Katharine Farmer does a great job at directing, but abruptly loses the plot at the very end when she has Crim's women circling each other like hungry wolves before giving them the heartfelt resolution they've fought hard for. The action is set against a gorgeous plush living room designed by Roisin Martindale that seems to glow under Jamie Platt's lighting design.

Martin and Montgomery are the highlight of the production. While the mother-daughter duo is dismally constrained by the tight confines of the text, their bond surfaces in their emotional displays. Farmer's direction strives to break them free from Crim's bounds, but the demands of the script mean that needs must and we're treated to a relative frostiness in the relations between characters.

Nadine has raised Eleanor since she was a baby, and yet her approach to her suffering appears virtually clinical. The bitterness she feels in regard to Allison's refusal of marriage and adoption explodes but then subsides without much of a fuss. When her partner reveals the truth of Eleanor's conception, she's merely hurt that she wasn't made aware of it.

The men can be equally baffling too. Rob is introduced as somewhat of a comedic relief and Kyem Jnr doesn't give him the space needed to have the meaningful conversation with Doug when the father suddenly materialises in Allison and Nadine's house. Regretfully, Grove is also a bit of a disappointment in his treatment of the alcoholic parent, and has little-to-no stage presence in this instance.

All in all, it's a shame that we can see what Never Not Once is trying to do but never get to experience it adequately. It tries too hard to make a handful of statements that never quite take root, and, eventually, a few capable performances aren't enough to save a mediocre play.

Never Not Once runs at the Park Theatre until 5 March.

Photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli

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