Directed superbly by Wesley Enoch, Black Diggers is a deeply questioning piece about Indigenous men who served in World War I. It is done by a powerful ensemble of nine: George Bostock, Luke Carroll, Shaka Cook, Trevor Jamieson, Kirk Page, Guy Simon, Colin Smith, Eliah Watego and Tibian Wyles, joined late in the piece on opening night by bugler Cameron Smith whose job it is to summon up The Last Post and lay it against the sound of the didgeridoo. And it is underpinned by careful and perceptive research.

It's surreal and heavy with disturbing imagery, from the land-clearing massacres of Indigenous people to the terrors of the trenches. Irony abounds. The men encounter racism when they try to enlist to fight for their country. A baby rescued from a 19th-century slaughter as an interesting "specimen" grows up to fight in the army of a country that will not even give him citizenship.

Men step out and talk to the audience about their experiences of joining up, of war and of the aftermath. One comes home but is frozen and traumatised, unable to communicate with family, clutching a bottle of French earth that is his way of trying to bring home the spirit of a dead comrade. Another talks of the pieces of metal that years after are still working their way out of his skin. An old man with many medals stands proudly at a war memorial to remember his companions.

And the soldiers are brought to laughing life, with humour and feeling. They struggle with the limited thinking of the white Australian army when it comes to recruitment of non-Europeans but find ways to join up. Names are changed, ages fudged, parents leaned upon for reluctant permission.

At war they have to prove themselves against racism. After the war they are supposed to go back in their box; no soldier settlement farms and RSL for them. The images of those who are disabled, those who die and those who return to argue are telling. And the white-daubed figure of a ghost who will never return is both telling and frightening.

Stephen Curtis' dark-slabbed set is used as a blackboard by the ensemble to write names of places and of people, rubbing them out and creating a developing look, from graffitied wall to war memorial. Ben Hughes' lighting is spare and atmospheric, catching a face here, a row of trench-bound soldiers there. A drum full of fire burns to one side, flickering on faces. The occasional songs echo soldiers' bawdy and serious hymns. The digeridoo mourns with the bugle.

The issues of the play are not new but not dismissible as ancient history. Black Diggers is only passing through for a few days but deserves to be packed out.