Hir

Hir
By Taylor Mac. Belvoir. August 12 – September 10, 2017

American queer performance artist Taylor Mac has written a sharp comedy drama not just about transgender shifts but also wider transitions across the country in gender roles and masculine and working class identities.

US Marine Isaac, dishonourably discharged, returns to his fibro home to find his once alpha male Dad now stroke-ridden, the former plumber dressed in a nightie and the bad makeup of a clown.

It’s the revenge of Isaac’s mother Paige, who’s also abandoned all housework and been reborn into the new gender ideologies of her transgender daughter, now girly son Kurt.   All this transitioning is too much for Isaac who struggles to get his Dad back in pants and his old home in order.

Michael Hankin’s domestic set is a gloriously trashed world and his costumes span from character rich bogan to the family dragging up for Paige’s obligatory costume therapy.

Anthea Williams expertly directs both the confused pain and the rollicking ideological satire of Zac’s characters and is well-served by her cast.  The incomparable Helen Thomson makes a joyous if terrifyingly zealous “new” Paige. 

She and Kurt Pimblett as Kurt, the “Hir”of the play, both underpin it’s humanity while being hilarious in the mad provocations of this gender new world.

Zac’s ambiguous play throws all cards in the air. He chronicles the chaos but makes no moral case for this newly gendered universe.  Rather, the victims are obvious. 

Back from war, Michael Walley as Isaac convincingly battles drug addiction as he wants back lost certainties. And as Dad, Greg Stone barely speaks but ruefully conjures his love of the old bigotries.  It’s a funny and interesting new play.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Brett Boardman.

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