Schaubühne Berlin: 'The Enemy of the People', Barbican.

Before the actors entered the stage of Thomas Ostermeier's The Enemy of the people a projection filled the stage from top to bottom, black on white. I turned to my companion, a graphic designer and said, it's weird, it doesn't matter how many times I read this, it still doesn't make any sense to me. 'It's the leading', she said, 'it can make words very difficult to understand.' The words weren't taken from Ibsen's text but from The Coming Insurrection, a political text written by an anonymous French collective named The Invisible Committee as a response to the late 2000 financial collapse. Ostermeier chose the words as a way of connecting the themes of Ibsen's play to the contemporary world, specifically the recent Occupy movement. The Occupy movement has been criticised for its lack of unified focus and clear alternatives to the Capitalist environment it criticised and the same accusations could be levelled at Ostermeier's production.

However, this seems a little un fair. Brecht, arguably the Godfather of Political Theatre, believed it was the role of theatre to engage audiences in critical reflection of their own, not to provide them with answers. Brecht would certainly have approved of the inclusion of an audience debate, in which we were encouraged, within the context of town meeting, to engage in increasingly heated criticisms of our own political environment. He would have also approved of some of the production other added inclusions, which felt distinctly Brechtian in style. Impromptu beatboxing battles and acoustic versions of David Bowie and Gnarl's Barkley felt very much like Brecht's desire to entertain and educate. The set, a black backdrop chalked all over with Basquiat style sketches, depicting an ultra hip apartment - all kitted out with covetable Danish design, had the feeling of Brechtian alienation combined with Berlin cool.

However the play itself is Naturalistic in origin and the production felt much more conventional than the anarchistic trailer had led us to believe. Five minutes of paint buckets and dirty electronica is spread out over two and a half hours of narrative storytelling and realistic and skillfully played performances. In fact what with the not-cheap ticket prices, the Barbican setting, and audience composition, the whole experience felt, at times, like it was inducing the very liberal intelligentsia the piece was purporting to criticise. Yet, despite this, after the narcissistic feel of some recent immersive experiences, it felt  a breath of fresh air to be asked to engage in thinking about the world. Lets just hope that isn't just hot air though.