This is not the Amazon. Neither the jungle, nor the multinational behemoth set on destroying any semblance of local community in our bonfire, AI-driven destiny of poisoned skies, blazing fires and toxic slop waters.
But Break of Day’s giant revolve on the Malthouse’s mighty Merlyn stage allows us a diorama cut-through of an analogous production line packing facility where Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? star Kat Stewart’s put-upon Pamela works like a dog all night long just to make nowhere near enough money to get by.
Like many of us, she feels thoroughly invisible in a system that’s designed to crush her into dust.
We love Kat Stewart!
We do! Savage River playwright Steve Rodgers has crafted a very specific character in the magnificent Stewart’s Pamela. One that’s all-too recognisable in our late capitalist death-spiral that purposefully crushes the human spirit.
A worn-thin single mum, she’s trying to keep food on the table and is forced to share a bed with her teenage daughter, the academically-minded Rae (Sherry-Lee Watson), in their poky one-bedroom rental.
But as strong as Pamela is on the page, with her pin-drop monologues about walking the estate in an outer city suburb somewhere in Australia, it’s Stewart who nails the bone weariness of Break of Day. As directed with urgent authority by Sarah Goodes, Stewart’s an empathy machine you can’t take your eyes or ears off.
What’s Break of Day all about?
The working class. An increasingly amorphous group too-rarely written about or presented on local stages, partly because Australia likes to pretend it’s above such limiting social strata.
This, despite being founded on the British Empire’s genocidal campaign on behalf of the Crown. A heinous endeavour that tried to wipe out the Indigenous population and also transported plenty of poor British folks for crimes as insignificant as stealing a loaf of bread to feed their kids.
A shadow that flickers in the pale moonlight hung over everything in Break of Day.
There’s no spare cash for Pamela to pawn a second-hand laptop that works, just so Rae can finish her due-in-the-morning essay on the unreliable narrator behind Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Heck, there isn’t even enough to deck the norm-upending Rae in the suit she wants to wear to the school prom. This, arm-in-arm with her irrepressibly optimistic boyfriend, wannabe actor and dancer Jedediah (Ngemba actor Theo Clarke), who cleans the backed-up bogs at Pamela’s work.
Pamela’s set on Rae escaping her fate by securing a 96 score on her ATAR – though goodness knows how they’ll fund her going to uni. Pamela’s unimpressed that her daughter’s focused on Nabokov’s infamously creepy dude, having had more than enough of unreliable men in her life, including Rae’s absentee father and Pamela’s too-present Pop (Richard Piper), a cranky drunk with mobility issues and leery resistance to keeping things nice. He clashes with Rae despite clearly adoring her. Maybe too much.
Then there’s the confusing chemistry between Pamela and her former schoolmate Sanjeeva. Played with schlubby charm by Chum Ehelepola, he’s now her boss, both a cop for and slave to the very same system that’s keeping them both down. All the while, the AI-driven robots’ death march proceeds towards annihilating her meagre income.
Sounds meaty, do the crew pull it off?
Absolutely! Goodes has a sure handle on Rodgers’ tightly drawn story, with Stewart’s performance soaring high above that fabulous revolve.
Conjured by set designer Anna Cordingley, Break of Day’s impressive set encompasses, across two towering levels, the factory production line, office, toilets, a litter-strewn alley, rooftop perch and Pamela’s humble kitchen and bathroom. It’s fantastic.
Paul Jackson’s understated yet precise lighting helps guide us through these circling spaces and the shift from dusk to dawn as we’re held breathless by Stewart and co.
Cordingley also takes great care to bring op-shopped believability to her costume design, telling us much about these characters’ hand-to-mouth lived reality. Likewise, there’s an electric thrum to composer Jethro Woodward’s magnetic pull of a score that suggests the flicker of buzzing factory lights and streetlamps.
And the cast are up to it?
For sure. The scale of the staging matches the intimate panic of Pamela’s rising dread, with Stewart giving the role her all and the ensemble stepping up to that plate.
Watson is also brilliant as the determined Rae. Even as she dreams of escaping the ’burbs and a fate she memorably relates to Jed, she’s less sure of her mum’s determination she go to uni.
Clarke is the ray of light we need in the anxiety that swirls around Break of Day. Prone to goofing around, he’s devoted to Rae and determined they can succeed in place, raising the community up with them. It’s a credit to Clarke that his bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s Caliban, rehearsed by Jed for an audition, makes me want to see someone cast him in The Tempest.
Shakespeare’s storm of pompously invading forces enslaving the rightful owners of the land loops right back to Australia’s reality-warping powers of denial and the mess we’ve made of our inhuman future that Break of Day tackles. Ehelepola brings both comedy and tragedy to Sanjeeva’s compromised role in that prophecy of deliberately manufactured poverty.
Rodgers wraps all this and a great deal more into the play without it feeling too soap boxy. Goodes runs with it, encouraging nuanced performances that are both of-the-moment and frustratingly eternal, with factory lines blurring.
Who will love Break of Day?
Fans of strong emotional drama with political heart, shows with enough laughter to dull the pain of bitter truths, and anyone with discernment who wouldn’t pass up a chance to see Kat Stewart flex her theatrical muscles on a jaw-dropping set.
'Break of Day' is on now at Malthouse Theatre until August 29, 2026. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.
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