The second novel or the follow-up to a hit show are traditionally the trap where dreams go to die. Expectations are high and hard to manage and so often, what was effervescently successful first time around fails to find fresh fizz. And then we have Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore. In 2018 they were Unqualified, and the show was a raging success. Now, after the world has been turned upside down for more than two years, they are Still Unqualified. And we are so much the better for it.

Catherine Moore and Genevieve Hegney in Unqualified 2: Still Unqualified, Ensemble Theatre, 2022. Photo © Prudence Upton

Hegney and Moore are funny, clever and talented women. They can write, they can act, and they can sing – really well. Put them together, as writers and performers, and the result is not only effervescent – and brilliantly silly – but also touching and insightful. They are the real deal in authentically conjuring up women’s lives and experiences, and an even realer deal in finding the laugh-out-loud humour in those lives, no matter how bitter are the pills that may have to...