Look out – here comes Cassandra. Her hair falls long and loose with a braid running through it: part classical heroine, part bohemian drifter. She could be a warrior maiden or the lead singer of an indie rock group. Fake-vintage band T-shirt, gold metallic miniskirt cut like the flaps of ancient armour, and the detail that unsettles the image: a large shopping bag she schleps from scene to scene.

The bag – one of those plastic totes you buy at the checkout – is a cute touch. It features an earnest slogan printed in large type: ‘I choose to re-use’. This works as a sly legend for playwright Tom Wright, that tireless adaptor of plays, novels, and true histories for the stage, but it also draws attention to the questions posed by this new Malthouse production: how do myths and stories get reused and to what end? What choices are made and why?

Troy, then, is less a retelling of the Trojan War than an enquiry into how myths shape collective identity, how they function as national scripts and cultural touchstones. More specifically, it is a reflection – rather bloodless, perhaps overingenious – on the entanglement of myth and war: how myth veils the realities of past events while at the same time generating the conditions for future conflict.