Almost ten years after the conflict in Afghanistan began, this 40 minute one-man piece (two if you include—and you should— the virtual presence of Frank Cox-O’Connell projected onto a small clay-man model) examines the ever-present reality of war in an intimate Skype-like encounter between childhood friends Evan, a writer, and Thom, a soldier on the brink of war.

A self-confessed ‘small idea’, One Reed Theatre’s play tackles a big theme, taking the lost epic of Little Iliad and its story of Philoctetes as the basis for a profound and poignant synthesis of art and war. Written by Webber and directed by Cox-O’Connell, the piece relies on the methods of the US Army-funded company Theatre of War for the remarkable link it determines between two themes; expressing post-war fatigue through classical Greek tragedy.

Delivered to no more than fifteen audience members at a time, each of us is equipped with headphones through which the convincingly incarnate conversation is fed. Notwithstanding the distractingly empty clink of Thom’s supposedly full can of beer, his projection makes a mesmerising centre piece and the use of clay as the backdrop to his image subtly illustrates the mouldable and equally breakable condition of the human psyche.