A Hero of the People

Do you know what I believe in? I believe in us. Me and you, right here. This town was once an incredible place. We have to have courage to fight for it again.

Hero or enemy? Who can actually tell the difference?

Everything is going to be fine, better than fine, in fact there’s nothing that can’t be achieved if everyone just believes a little. That’s what the town’s MP, Mick, thinks.

He’s optimistic, positively boosterish about his plan for the town. He just wants the naysayers to pipe down. But there’s a
problem. His sister, Dr Rhiannon Powell, has discovered that the project appears to be polluting the town’s water supply. Mick sold the town a story about the future, but what will happen when reality looks to tear that story apart?

Is Mick a hero of the people, or is he in fact their enemy? Brad Birch’s bold new reimagining of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People pits the personal against the political and facts against emotion. A Hero of the People is a gripping contemporary drama for 2022.

Brad Birch’s theatre work includes Black Mountain for Paines Plough, Theatr Clwyd and the Orange Tree; This Must be the Place for Poleroid at the VAULT Festival; The Brink at the Orange Tree; The Endless Ocean at the RWCMD; Tender Bolus at the Royal Exchange and Schauspielhaus, Hamburg; Gardening for the Unfulfilled and Alienated for Undeb at the Edinburgh Festival; Soap Opera, Where the Shot Rabbits Lay and Permafrost at the Royal Court; Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against a Brick Wall at Soho Theatre; Light Arrested Between the Curtain and the Glass at Sherman Cymru. He won the Pick of the Year Award at the VAULT festival in 2017, the Harold Pinter Commission in 2016 and the Fringe First Award in 2013. He is currently under commission at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Court. Black Mountain is on tour in 2017/18.