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Timely is the most apt word to describe Katy Warner’s two-hander about two women stationed on a frontline military base in an unspecified desert war. It was written in response to the Australian government’s decision to allow women to serve in combat this year, and follows the UK’s similar ruling made in July 2016.

Sarah Cullinan and Natalia Sledz give two assured performances as soldiers who are driven to boredom by the inertia of combat, and to insanity by their role in the killing of innocent babies. This shocking transformation of characters often portrayed as mothers into murderers attempts to present a formal challenge to gender stereotypes but in fact relies on superficial provocations.

It doesn’t so much deconstruct gender roles as expound conventional and rigid interpretations of femininity. Warner’s decision to place two women characters in a war-zone setting may well nurture fresh ground upon which to approach conceptions of gender identity. But that alone is not enough. This is an awkward centring of female gender identity on motherhood, which suggests that women serving in the military are weakened by their role as mothers.

Warner may be trying to portray these women as compassionate characters who are still complicit in warfare. Yet their humaneness is tied so inextricably to motherhood that the gender politics are far too one-dimensional. Beckettian levels of ennui and placelessness are intended to jar against the raw emotion of the play’s protagonists but, in practice, it makes for a flimsy structure to explore gender issues.