What would happen if the climax of Homer's Odyssey got transplanted to the US, circa 1972, and mixed with many of the concerns of the era together with hearty helpings of absurdism and black comedy? Something, perhaps, like Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June, which is the fourth production in Canberra Rep's 2018-19 season.

Vonnegut was best known as a novelist, for books like Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. But he also wrote several works for the stage and Cate Clelland, who is directing Wanda June as her 11th Rep production, says the 1970 play was a revision of Penelope, which Vonnegut had written 10 years earlier.

"It's based on the story of Penelope and Odysseus - very, very vaguely," she says.

In Homer's  original, the hero Odysseus returns home after 10 years of travel and adventure and 10 years fighting the Trojan War. Odysseus discovers he has been presumed dead and his son Telemachus tells him his wife Penelope has been delaying the courtship of 108 suitors who have taken up residence in their house. He has to take drastic action.

Things are a little different in Wanda June.  Penelope Ryan (played by Jess Waterhouse) has only two suitors, peaceloving healer Dr Norbert Woodly (Peter Holland)  and vacuum salesman Herbert Shuttle (Rowan McMurray), who fancies himself a macho man.

"It presents two ideas of masculinity - both are satirical."

Her 12-year-old son Paul (Nick Dyball) was only four when his father left and idolises his memory.

"The play is about what happens when the husband comes home after eight years."

Harold Ryan (Michael Sparks) is a war hero, a soldier and a hunter - "a study in hypermasculinity", as Clelland puts it -  who went off adventuring in the Amazon and was reported to have died when his plane crashed.  Now he's back, along with his sidekick, Colonel Looseleaf Harper (David Bennett), who, Clelland says, "has a few screws loose".

Harold's return is a shock to everyone but although he wants everything to return to how it was - with family subservient and obedient to him - things have changed in the intervening years.

"The play is about what happens next," Clelland says.

"Penelope has gotten herself educated and has ideas and is ready to move on - she's learning to stand on her own two feet."

And where does Wanda June (Jemima Phillips) figure in all this? She was a girl who died on her 11th birthday, one of three ghosts in the play, along with Mildred (Antonia Kitzel), Harold's third and previous wife ("We think she died an alcoholic")  and Major von Konigswald (Iain Murray), a German war hero killed by Harold.

"We go to Heaven to meet them," Clelland says.

"Heaven is like nothing anyone else has ever imagined."

She says Happy Birthday, Wanda June is "a very dark comedy - Vonnegut is known for his gallows humour" as well as "a crazy, crazy play". But, she says, there are also some disturbing scenes.

On the subject of whether the play is something of a time capsule or is relevant today, Clelland says, "Both. It does feel very much of its era but there are a lot of things that resonate with us now - ideas of masculinity and masculine behaviour, domestic violence is very current, and it's also a very strong anti-war play ... So yes, it's very much a period piece and yes, it has quite a lot of connections with us in the 21st century."