Directed and produced by Lachlan
Houen. Assistant Director Anna Lorenz. Lighting design by Lachlan Houen and
Liah Naidoo. Stage Manager Lucy van Dooren. Sound designer and composer Fergus
Mashman. Off The Ledge Theatre.
Courtyard Theatre. Canberra Theatre Centre. July 16-18 2026. Bookings:
62752700.
“Love is a stain I never want to
fade.” It is a love brandished in the complex and confusing world of a young
woman growing up, rejected and alienated and desperately searching for love and
friendship. Winsome Ogilvie gives a
powerhouse performance as Millie, a young woman struggling to assert her
identity in a world that is more prone to judge than to accept, to diminish
rather than support and feed insecurity rather than inspire confidence and
security. And yet Benjamin Nichol’s startling debut monodrama offers hope. His
writing pulses with dynamic realism, uttering a voice that is singularly that
of Millie, a battler, burning with defiance in a quest to discover herself. Ogilvie
breathes a fire into her character fuelled by an inner resilience and the love for
her best friend Annie, a love so strong that she gifts her friend an opal that
her grandfather gave her.
 |
| Winsome Ogilvie is Millie in Benjamin Nichol's Kerosene |
Nichol’s writing is visceral, plumbing the struggles of Millie’s coming of age and her passage from the onset of her menstrual cycle at the Lilydale Swimming Club to the awakening of a wider world. Through it all Nichol weaves the relationship of Millie and Annie and the abiding power of loyalty and unswerving love of a dear friend.
Director Lachlan Hoen presents Nichol’s intense monodrama in the sparse setting of the Canberra Theatre Centre’s Courtyard Studio against the blacks and with only Ogilvie to tell the story unencumbered by any setting. Only a variety of spots capture the shifting moments of Ogilvie’s 50 minute telling of her story. Nichol’s writing is powerfully evocative capturing the shifting emotions of a girl and a woman confronting life’s challenges. The language is from the heart, forceful, often profane, or poetically evocative. Ogilvie, alone on stage, embraces the text with all the passion and energy of Millie’s search for meaning and eruptive anger at Annie’s abuse by her partner that fires the urge for revenge. Together Nichol and Ogilvie forge a partnership that has resulted in a compelling and fiery performance. It has been said that all that is required for excellent storytelling upon the stage is two actors and a plank, and sometimes you don’t need the plank. Playwright Nichol’s debut work needs no plank and only Ogilvie to tell his tale. Ogilvie gives a performance that every aspiring young actor should see.
Kerosene sees the creation of a new partnership that promises to ignite an exciting new flame in Australian theatre and in the spirit of Millie’s final moment of love and hope, I await more collaboration between Nichol and Ogilvie under the direction of Off The Ledge Theatre Company’s Lachlan Houen. Houen is moving Off The Ledge Theatre Company to Melbourne but I hope that future work by this exciting new company will again be seen on the Courtyard Theatre stage.
