Towards the end of Brad Birch’s reimagining of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, farmer Patrick places a water bottle in the centre of the stage and invites fracking enthusiast and local MP Mick Powell to take a sip. He smirks and hesitates. It is a tense, briefly thrilling moment.
While it is a tidy retelling of the source narrative, it is unfortunate that not much else in Birch’s adaptation nor in Joe Murphy’s staging comes close to being equally compelling. Birch relocates Ibsen’s original narrative to an unnamed town in present-day Mid Wales. It is an intriguing conceit: with Mick’s support, fracking company Westra are testing potential gas sites. Jobs and regeneration wealth are promised, until an explosion at the site begins to pollute the water table bringing Mick into conflict with Rhiannon, his sister and local GP.
