Playing up Ibsen's surprisingly good ear for comedy likeably bumptious Dr Stockmann (Anthony Sher) discovers that, thanks to its polluted water, the health baths which he helped to develop, are killing more than curing. Naively thinking he will be acclaimed as a life-saving hero, his manipulative brother (John Shrapnel), the town's mayor, soon introduces him to the political realité. The good doctor calls in favours from his circle of “freethinking” friends to get the truth out. But all of them - including the local newspaper editor (the brilliant Tristan Gravelle) a Hattonesque left-winger who rapidly reveals that he is not as committed to his high principles as he seems - soon desert him. Backed into a corner, Stockmann entrenches into a progressively more extreme view of human nature. This timely production explores a lot of current issues including how isolated idealism can transmute into extremism and why truth is the first victim of political news-management