TheatreWorks

“He’d been shoving her around for a while now. I knew that. Sometimes she’d tell me, sometimes not, but I could always tell when they’d had a blue. But she was my girl and sometimes things were better left unsaid.”

Well-meaning, teenage misfit Millie comes home from work one day to discover her old childhood friend Annie bruised and bloody on her doorstep. Millie picks her up, dusts her off and puts her in the bath. Lying in bed together, the two reminisce on a childhood that occurred a lifetime ago and recall an old promise to care for one other “until the end of the earth, no matter the cost and no matter the consequence.” As Annie sleeps, Millie vows to honour her friend in the one way that seems fair; revenge.

Set in the outskirts of metropolitan Melbourne, KEROSENE is a relentless and unsympathetic character study exploring the complex, ugly and dangerous symptoms of love. It is a homage to the blind loyalty that accompanies lifelong friendships and the realities of what it means to grow up young, quiet and forgotten in modern day Australia.

Following the precedent set by stylistically similar productions such as Simon Stephen’s Sea Wall, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and the critically acclaimed Theatre Works season of Swansong, KEROSENE embraces the power of simple, solo storytelling in creating an intimate, absorbing and powerful theatrical experience. No set and no props – just one woman telling a story about protecting and caring for her best friend in the only way she knows how.