When Ibsen’s classic play about a whistle-blower gets five major productions in eight years, you can be sure there’s something in the water.

Town medical officer, Dr Stockman, has discovered dangerous levels of pollution in the local baths and it seems reasonable that people will understand the need for an overhaul. No.

Howard Davies’ production invigoratingly exposes the ethical complexities of truth versus vested interest and Hugh Bonneville gives a bravura performance as the unbendingly righteous Dr Stockman.

The political action winds itself up from trouble in the living room to farce in the newspaper office, to a noisy public showdown that’s both Kafkaesque and jauntily Brecthian as the rocks fly to music.

Christopher Hampton’s resonantly contemporary text sounds all too familiar. ‘A plague-infected soil of lies’ anyone?

Whistleblowers seldom thrive, and ‘the people’ can be led by a craven press to act against their own best interests. But the truth will out.

Only last week, the Hillsborough families finally won the right to ram whistles into the lying mouths of the South Yorkshire Police and will make them blow very hard indeed.