First Love is the Revolution is a wildly imaginative, eccentric, beguiling play about star-crossed teenage lovers – one of whom is a human, the other a fox. It sounds decidedly strange and yet somehow it works.

Written by London-based Australian playwright Rita Kalnejais (Babyteeth), the play premiered in London in 2015. In her program notes, Kalnejais says that she wrote it while she was experiencing “serious culture shock. I’d moved to London a year earlier and felt completely out of my depth writing in British-English. Though we were speaking the same words (more or less), the intention behind them, the rhythm, what filled the pauses, the reason for speaking in the first place, seemed to me to be completely different. English-English felt like a second language. If I’m honest, that’s why I wrote a play with talking animals…” she says.

It’s a wacky but wonderful idea that leads to a very funny, sweet rom-com providing plenty to ponder around life, death and a plethora of human emotions.

Bardiya McKinnon as Basti and Sarah Meacham as Rdeca. Photograph © Brett Boardman

Fourteen year old Basti is small, sad and frequently bullied at school. His mother has...