Writer Kieran Hurley and director Finn den Hertog bring Henrik Ibsen into the 21st century with an electric retelling of An Enemy of the People, simply titled The Enemy. The setting is an unnamed Scottish town, but the kind most readers will be familiar with – the ‘once proud’ variety of industrial town now sunken into multi-generational poverty.
Adam is the true story of Adam Kashmiry, a young transgender man born in Alexandria, Egypt, who sought asylum in Glasgow to live safely as his authentic self. Adam has existed in various forms, including a Fringe production with only two actors. The version streaming on iPlayer, directed by Cora Bissett and Louise Lockwood, has been adapted from a stage play to a “theatrical on-screen drama”. Over the course of an hour, we watch Adam’s agonising search for a resolution to the trap in which he has been placed: no gender clinic will help him transition until he has been granted asylum, but he will not be granted asylum unless he can “prove” he is a trans man. Warm, uncompromising, funny, heart-breaking and above all human, Adam is an emotional tour-de-force.
