Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Jun 10 – 20, 2026
Playwright: Taylor Fernandez
Director: Beatrice Blackwell
Cast: Jade Fuda, Jenny Guigayoma, Jake Walker
Images by Laura Elaine
Theatre review
Chastity writes erotica online, openly disclosing a catalogue of unconventional sexual desires and proclivities. While she strives to resist feelings of shame surrounding these impulses, doing so proves far from straightforward. In Everyone Knows I’m A Pervert, Taylor Fernandez places considerable emphasis on the interior life of its protagonist, yet fails to construct a compelling dramatic framework around her. The result is a work whose central character never becomes sufficiently engaging, and without a robust narrative to sustain interest, the play struggles to establish a firm footing.
Beatrice Blackwell’s direction leans heavily into the script’s eccentric — and, it must be said, frequently laboured — humour, while doing little to compensate for its dramaturgical shortcomings. Consequently, the production often feels less like a coherent theatrical experience than an unrelenting barrage of noise and activity: at best energetic, at worst exhausting.
On an otherwise bare stage, Holly Nesbitt’s lighting design shoulders much of the responsibility for generating visual interest, lending the production a welcome sense of theatricality and atmosphere. Zaphnath-Penaea Messenger’s sound design efficiently establishes locations and situations, though rarely aspires to anything more evocative or imaginative.
As Chastity, Jenny Guigayoma excels in the play’s occasional moments of vulnerability and poignancy, though such opportunities are regrettably scarce. Jade Fuda and Jake Walker assume a multitude of supporting roles, often with impressive versatility and commitment. Whatever the production’s flaws, the dedication of its performers is never in doubt.
Sexuality manifests differently in every individual, yet our reluctance to discuss these intimate dimensions of ourselves allows restrictive notions of acceptable sexual expression to persist. Chastity is entitled to regard herself as a “pervert”, but the term itself is ultimately devoid of meaning if we accept that there is no singular norm against which human sexual experience can be measured.
Suzy Goes See 