Wild

A black comedy by Mike Bartlett

The plight of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden provides the background for this latest drama by playwright Mike Bartlett, who gave us Chariots Of Fire, and King Charles III. Drawing on the limbo-like existence of the man stranded in Moscow airport for inspiration, this darkly comic play asks - who watches those, who watches us? And when an ordinary citizen takes it upon himself to shine the light on secret practises - does that make him a hero? Or a traitor?

One minute our hero is sitting in a fast food restuarant with his girlfriend, planning their future. The next, he has pressed an enter button on his computer terminal, and gone on the run across the world, with the security agencies on his tail, trying to evade years in Gitmo.

His crime? He has released a ream of documents to the world's newspapers that exposes the inner workings of those who claim to protect us, and their clandestine methods of doing so. The press call him a hero; his government denounce him as a traitor. And as he languishes in a featureless Moscow hotel room for the visible future he asks, "Was it worth it?" A bleakly comic three-hander that looks at the life-changing price of becoming a hero.