HIR

2 to 25 August, Herald Theatre Auckland The New Zealand premiere of New York playwright Taylor Mac’s absorbing black comedy (2015). Plot: Isaac returns home from a threeyear stint in Afghanistan to discover his suburban family engaged in a war of its own. His mother has liberated herself from patriarchal ideas of cleaning and cooking, his sibling is transitioning and impatient to leave the world around hir (now his/her preferred gender pronoun) and his once dominant father is in a neglected heap in the corner being force-fed oestrogen-laden smoothies. “HIR lightens the weight of gender theory, places it in a family home and then detonates it. Shrapnel flies everywhere,” says a review in The Guardian. Starring Rima Te Wiata last seen in the movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople. silotheatre.co.nz