A soldier comes home from war only to find that home is not what it once was. This premise, fertile with dramatic possibilities, has inspired storytellers from Homer and Sophocles to contemporary writers like Ben Fountain. In Taylor Mac’s Hir, the foreign war zone and the rainbow-splattered domestic space act as minefields.

The play – first seen in Australia at Belvoir in 2017 – is confined to a twelve-hour timeframe that begins when Isaac (Jordan Fraser-Trumble) returns from Afghanistan. For the past three years he has been society’s sacrificial son, a marine in Mortuary Affairs retrieving body parts. Dishonourably discharged for using meth, no parades await him. There is, however, the solace of home – or so he believes.