Towards the top of Brad Birch’s reimagining of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the Individuals, farmer Patrick locations a water bottle within the centre of the stage and invitations fracking fanatic and native MP Mick Powell to take a sip. He smirks and hesitates. It's a tense, briefly thrilling second.
Whereas it's a tidy retelling of the supply narrative, it's unlucky that not a lot else in Birch’s adaptation nor in Joe Murphy’s staging comes near being equally compelling. Birch relocates Ibsen’s unique narrative to an unnamed city in present-day Mid Wales. It's an intriguing conceit: with Mick’s help, fracking firm Westra are testing potential gasoline websites. Jobs and regeneration wealth are promised, till an explosion on the website begins to pollute the water desk bringing Mick into battle with Rhiannon, his sister and native GP.
It's by no means clear whether or not A Hero of the Individuals is a up to date story of political corruption set in a particular location, or whether it is alleged to operate as a parable. It goals to be each, maybe, however such ambiguity is unpersuasive.
Vaguely native whereas straining for universalism, it's undermined by banalities and illogical exposition which might be at odds with its supposed actuality. For instance, if this can be a up to date world the place the deletion of a company tweet is a big plot level, it's by no means clear why the pages of an area newspaper seem to nonetheless be the one methodology of disseminating native info (or what the importance of this may imply in 2022, contemplating the perilous state of a lot native journalism). It's telling that the play is most persuasive in scenes which might be wholly unique, whereas a lot else falls between two dramatic stools.
But when the play fails to persuade, the performances typically do. As Mick, Oliver Ryan is pleasingly slimy and, as his daughter Hannah, Mared Jarman presents a compelling emotional counterpoint. The wonderful Suzanne Packer stirringly imbues Rhiannon with a convincing gravitas, even when her character has to resort to emotional histrionics, and Catrin Stewart as editor Elin Tate and Pal Aron as Patrick are nice in two underwritten roles.
Post a Comment