After their electric Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? vaulted from the little Red Stitch Theatre to the Comedy Theatre then Sydney Theatre Company, the reunion of Sarah Goodes and Kat Stewart is an exciting prospect.

This time the director and actor dive into contemporary dead-end-town Australia with the world premiere of Steve Rodgers’s Break of Day.

It’s a work of considerable empathy, authenticity and dramatic clarity, sensitively brought to life by this dream team, a fine supporting cast, and some of the country’s most renowned creatives.

Kat Stewart in Malthouse Theatre’s Break of Day. Photo © Pia Johnson

Winner of the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award and The Australian Writers Guild Prize for Playwriting, Break of Day unfolds across one night and early morning in the satellite city of Burra Creek. It’s a fictional place rooted in the reality of towns where opportunity is limited, and currently that centres on a massive online retail distribution centre.

Single mum Pam (Stewart) takes three buses to work the night shift at this facility, where robots are rumoured to be taking over. It becomes apparent her few...