It’s a story biblical in resonance: prodigal son Hunter returns after seven years in the wilderness, to find younger brother Gordon finalising a lucrative real estate deal; the homestead’s boarded up, ageing Mum has been moved to a tiny flat, and the Utopia they knew as boys is set for redevelopment. The brothers come to blows, family secrets are uncovered, and the stage is set for a ninety-minute meditation on belonging, loss, self-discovery and the relentless pace of progress.

In less skilful hands, Boy Out of the Country’s plot could seem well-worn, even trite. To playwright Felix Nobis’s credit, he takes an old story and reinvents it as fresh and relevant. Much of this is due to the play’s clever structure, written in taut, idiomatic verse that eschews the tum-ti-tum of Banjo Paterson and energetically replicates the flow of everyday speech. Touching, funny, raw, bittersweet, the play is at once uniquely Australian and thematically universal.