Helena, grand dame of the Melbourne and Sydney theatre scene, thinks she has settled nicely into a restful performance regime of comedy classics in judiciously subsidised spaces. When her somewhat intense undergraduate daughter, Emmeline, hurls an asylum seeker/detention centre drama at her, Helena's professional certainties are shaken not so much by the play's contents as by its lead actor, Violet. A student of Australian theatre, Violet has chosen Helena to be her mentor and she sets about procuring her idol with disturbing intensity. Besieged and exhausted by the emotional demands of these two passionate young women, Helena finds herself facing a choice between biting on the burnt chop of desire and doing something really reprehensible.