Review: Hir

Hir hadn't even been on my radar when a friend asked if I wanted to go and see it, so I agreed and it became one of the three productions I scheduled for this week.
So what is it?
The Bush Theatre say:

Isaac (Arthur Darvill) gets home from serving in the marines to find war has broken out back home. In a nondescript town somewhere in Central Valley – America, Isaac’s mom Paige (Ashley McGuire) is blowing up entrenched routines.
Fed up with domestic patriarchy, Paige has stopped washing, cleaning and caring for their ailing father, who recently suffered a stroke. She reigns supreme.
Ally to their mother’s new regime is Isaac’s sibling Max (Griffyn Gilligan). Only last time Isaac checked, Max was Maxine. Once the breadwinner, Isaac’s dad (Andy Williams) has toppled from the head of the household to the bottom of the pile – a make-upped puppet emasculated by Paige once and for all.
In a cheap house made of plywood and glue, notions of masculinity and femininity become weapons with which to defeat the old order. But in Taylor Mac’s sly, subversive comedy, annihilating the past doesn’t always free you from it.

Now, it's taken me about 24 hours to process exactly what I thought of Hir, and the conclusion I reached is that, whilst there are positives, the show as a whole is a bit of a mess.

The acting itself solid. No complaints there. All four members of the cast turn in decent performances. And the staging works well: the clear messy/anarchic and clean/ordered split between the two halves does what it needs to.

However, the script tries to cram in way too much. There are Important Themes flying about all over the place, meaning that none of them are properly dealt with. The trauma of a soldier returning from a war zone, a young person establishing hir gender identity, living with serious illness, and domestic abuse are all major issues that suffer for being rammed into a short play. Nothing is fully explored. Another huge detraction is the fact that the mental/physical health of the characters is often treated, at best, lightly or, at worst, as a joke: that did not sit well.

Hir could have been an amazing bit of theatre. Instead, a waspish script is held together by some sound acting. It isn't a write-off, but your time could be better spent elsewhere.

3/5: Solid performances despite a plotting mess
Bush Theatre
Until July 22