Neil Armfield describes Scorched as being “very much at a crossroads”. His description taps into both how the play arose originally as a workshop between the writer Wajdi Mouawad and his actors, and the challenge of taking that original production and rendering it anew on the Australian stage.

Armfield’s own admission is honest. Scorched does feel like a piece at a crossroads in many ways: it is collision of cultural storytelling, sometimes quite filmic and staccato while at other times swept on a tide of grand poetry, at odds with its raw setting and dark reality. But for me, the power of Scorched lay in a narrative reaching out to raise human consciousness beyond the ego dominated duality of the past.

It is very much a reflection of the projected shadow of human experience and the pain it inflicts from generation to generation. And it is in this contemporary generational change that we are invited into the story of Simon (Ashley Lyons) and Janine (Yael Stone) who arrive at a Notary’s office to hear the reading of their mother’s will.

The notary, Alphonse Lebel, (Brian Lipson) reads out the last wishes of their mother, Nawal, unfurling the genesis for a journey that will take both children back to their mother’s country. The divided reaction of the children as Janine accepts her mother’s wish to track down their father and hand him a letter, and Simon, who vehemently denies he should carry out anything she wants, evokes the collective duality.

Sliding back into the past we are sucked into a vortex where past will meet present and are introduced to the story that will give rise to Simon and Janine’s present day.

Scorched captures the essence of humanity: the deepest desire to know our source, to know our origins, to know ourselves. It represents the world as our ego has made it and it calls us to let go of the “accumulated pain that is binding us.”

Writer Wajdi Mouawad has crafted a deeply moving journey into every human’s experience; an experience that is peppered by love and hatred, unity and war. It is this duality that we are being called on to overcome. Scorched is a metaphor for each of us returning to the light, to our source, to our god. But that through this journey there is the “agony of conflict.”

The final letter, handed to Janine and Simon’s father and read side stage by the older Nawal (Gillian Jones) is nothing short of a dramatic excellence. Deftly delivered, the notion that compassion and love has the power to overcome hatred and conflict and render the dual state inert seemed to flow through the space and touch every heart in the theatre.

A superb ensemble cast, also including Adam Hatzimanolis, Hazem Shammas and George Spartels, who at times struggled with a text that reaches out for cinematic brevity while also indulging in poetic delight. Striking performances from Paula Arundell as Nawal and Jihane and Lucia Mastrantone as Elhame and Sawda breathed a depth of pathos to Scorched, infusing it with a resonance that ripples long afterwards.

A central pillar, and comedic relief, Brian Lipson as Alphonse Lebel – the notary – delivered a hilarious malapropistic character with a voice like Denis Nordern. Lipson just got better as the evening progressed.

The set (Stephen Curtis), a simple fibro wall and the bare wall of the theatre, was coupled with a sand filled floor gradually swept aside to reveal an ornate, ancient floor in blood red. The actors were either sitting by the wall when not in action or themselves sweeping back the sand to reveal the past.

The visceral action of connecting with the earth for the actors seemed to release them of the nervous energy of opening night and allowed a calmer, more resolute performance to be revealed. These devices can so often be viewed as ridiculous appendages, more concerned with design for design’s sake but this space gave forth a ready and raw reality that didn’t interfere with the action.

Scorched will challenge you. It is a piece of theatre for our time because it looks upon a species that has been embroiled in an endless round of conflict for literally thousands of years. “Breaking the thread of intergenerational pain” is the challenge. Recognising that while we look upon the Middle East as a source of seemingly intractable conflict, we are also engaged in the very same. Our position is far more problematic because in the West we look in judgment on the Middle East, not being aware of our own Jungian projections.

The fact that a Lebanese born playwright has held up his own world to see it for what it is, is a powerful step towards a new world. It is not often that a work enables us to strip away the superficial differences to reveal the truth so utterly.

As Simon and Janine’s defiant father (Hazem Shammas) stands in court reading the letter of compassion from their mother, he is defenceless against her forgiveness and unconditional love.

“Nothing”, she says, “is more beautiful than being together.”

Is this the return journey that we all make when we die? Is our collective consciousness rising in order that we know that we will simply return from whence we came in a universal breath that moves in and out? Perhaps?

Whatever it is that is at work, Scorched gives us a chance to breathe anew at a crossroads in human history.

Scorched plays at Belvoir St Theatre until September 7.