The degazetted former township of Wittenoom, 1,420 kilometres north-north-east of Perth, stands like a dark shadow on the lungs of Australian mining, less an isolated blight than a synecdoche for the exploitation and avarice of the industry as a whole. It was named by Lang Hancock himself, created in 1947 by his company Australian Blue Asbestos Pty Ltd, and was directly responsible for the death of more than 2,000 people. It is a potent and ghostly setting for Mary Anne Butler’s play of the same name.

Dot (Caroline Lee) and her daughter Pearl (Emily Goddard) live in Wittenoom for the same reasons that attract most residents: stable housing, well-paid jobs, and the unstated but quietly formidable promise of community. Dot is a proud single mother, sexually liberated (particularly for a woman in 1950s rural Australia), unconcerned for her own reputation but fiercely protective of her daughter. Pearl is only mildly put out by her mother’s sexual exploits, and strangely incurious about her own parentage. She does ask her mother about her father’s identity, but seems far from destabilised when her mother admits that he could have been one of many.