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Too few Australian plays deal with issues of poverty, class and structural inequality, so this new work by playwright Steve Rodgers should be welcomed regardless of its quality. That it is also considered, subtle and deeply moving should be cause for celebration. The theatre can be overwhelmed by the solipsism of the middle class, and needs its perspective constantly widened.
Pam (Kat Stewart) works at an unnamed international packing warehouse in the fictional town of Burra Creek. Her daughter Rae (Sherry-Lee Watson) is an exceptionally talented year 12 student desperately trying to finish an essay on Lolita, but with a bung computer and Pam’s alcoholic dad Pop (Richard Piper) moving in to their cramped flat, distractions are numerous. Rae’s also falling for her immensely charming classmate Jedediah (Theo Clarke), who is preparing his end-of-year drama monologue, Caliban’s speech from The Tempest, through the lens of First Nations’ displacement and resistance. She wants to leave Burra; he wants to stay.
When the play opens, Pam’s on the way to work a 12-hour night shift through the dingy streets of a town she persistently dreams of escaping. She’s invisible, she explains in soliloquy, and something in the tone of her voice tells us this public erasure has been deliberate and protracted. But she has a purpose, and it’s tied up with Rae’s school results. If she can get her daughter out of Burra and into a university, then Rae will “have choices”, the power to change her own life.
Rodgers establishes an atmosphere of unremitting oppression and faux bonhomie in Pam’s workplace, superbly conceived and executed by set designer Anna Cordingley. Pam’s manager, Sanjeeva (Chum Ehelepola), is a childhood friend; together, they have a charged relationship complicated by a sexual past. But when Pam commits a crime under his nose, the consequences threaten everything she dreamed for Rae, and push her own life to the brink of disaster.
It’s material that could so easily be awful: schmaltzy, didactic, patronising socioeconomic cosplay. That it isn’t any of those things is testament to the integrity of Rodgers’ vision and the stately control director Sarah Goodes holds over the production. From Jethro Woodward’s swooning, cinematic score to the way characters seem washed and ennobled by Paul Jackson’s consummate lighting, the effect is somehow both lush and flinty. The play uses ellipsis – one action or motif will recede from view before returning suddenly many scenes later – as a way of illustrating that consequence plays a long game, and Goodes echoes this by the quality of her restraint.
Restraint is the organising principle for the cast, too; performances are made up of granular psychological details rather than grand gestures or histrionics. Stewart is superb, steely and devoted but cracked right through the middle, like someone concealing a mortal wound. Watson is a tight ball of potential, exploding in rage or passion, but also assured and resolute. Clarke is a real find, lithe and crafty, expressive and breezy; and Piper is magnificent as the toweringly pathetic Pop, whose indignities are distressing but eventually beatific. Ehelepola struggles with a less convincing subplot about music videos but is otherwise soulful and sincere.
The production is restrained in other, more detrimental, ways. At one hour and 45 minutes without an interval, it could have run longer and fleshed out its characterisations and narrative complexity. The result is a little threadbare, as if key scenes were missing. It seems a pity Pam and Jedediah don’t meet, for example, given their conflicting motivations; or that Pam and her father are denied a final confrontation. This reads less like ellipsis and more like avoidance.
The upside is a spareness and economy that keeps the scenes turning while allowing for occasional flights of fancy. Cordingley’s gorgeously textured town revolves like Prospero’s cell, and Rodgers’ poetic register lifts into high romanticism with the ease and logic of a dream. The production gets away with these tonal shifts because it’s so grounded and credible in every other way, a tactile and fully realised world.
Break of Day comes from a fine tradition of Australian plays – from the work of Dorothy Hewett and Daniel Keene to Patricia Cornelius and Ursula Yovich – that views the working class as inherently worthy of dramatic representation. It largely succeeds through the strength of its heartfelt conviction, honestly expressed: that every person has the right to personal dignity, to compassion and care. Rodgers and Goodes have created people who seem to live beyond the confines of the stage, even represent us in some cosmic way, and we invest wholeheartedly in their fates.
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