Break of Day
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...