In a time when we’ve redefined how to feel connected when we’re alone, Kerosene is about a seemingly unbreakable friendship that’s forced apart by the isolation of domestic violence. It’s part of Theatre Works’s program of new independent performances that are welcoming us back to live theatre in Melbourne.
Millie (Izabella Yena) grew up living with her grandfather in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. ‘Gramps’ knew showtunes but didn’t know that his grandchild wanted a Tamagotchi rather than an opal pendant from Coober Pedy, where her parents met and worked. The gem only became important to her when she gave it to her best friend, Annie, and Millie could see it around Annie’s neck when they danced at the school formal without caring what anyone else thought.
Co-creators Benjamin Nicol (director and writer) and Yena (performer) met when they studied acting at VCA. Nicol wrote the work during Melbourne’s lockdown and while it’s about isolation, it’s not about the year-defining virus.
Yet our return to theatre, after months of watching stories on screens, is still defined by our need to feel and to be safe. Theatre Works’s Covid-safe performance space, called the Glasshouse, is 12 fishbowl-ish booths with 48 seats above the four sides of a square stage.
While the reduced audience can feel protected behind their Perspex screens, the design of the space leaves performers with nowhere to hide. So, while it feels familiar to be watching a performer through yet another screen and hearing their voice through a speaker, it still feels awkward to be boxed off from the stage.
But this feeling of distance doesn’t last long as Yena’s performance breaks through to our hearts.
Millie, in shorts and a flannie, may never have been to a theatre, but Nicol’s script is more about secrets and longing than about class and opportunity. The two creators found an authentic voice for Millie that lets her be driven by hints of hope even as her life spirals around despair. She’s not immediately likeable and her actions are impulsive and misguided, but her loneliness and anger are easy to understand.
In telling us about Annie, Millie holds her emotions tightly, but Yena’s emotionally-layered performance reveals the secrets that Millie won’t let herself feel, and we’re left knowing Millie far better than she knows herself.
Kerosene is about the emotional consequences of being isolated, be it in the underground darkness of a mining town, in losing a best friend, or in not being able to escape from control and violence. It was created in isolation and created for new theatre spaces that don’t allow for physical closeness on or around the stages. It’s not a story about now, but it’s a story for now, and if a new work of this calibre is setting the bar for 2021, it’s going to be an exciting year.
The season is sold out, but there is a wait list, and we can all hope that audience sizes can increase, venues can re-open and, once again, there will be so much live theatre in Melbourne that we are spoiled for choice.