The Herd (NHB Modern Plays)

Co-Recipient of the 2014 Critics' Circle Most Promising Playwright Award

"A lively and moving comedy-drama... Mr. Kinnear writes witty but always natural dialogue that allows his themes to emerge organically... The Herd breathes with real, complicated life... Most remarkably, for all the sadness at its core, The Herd remains a buoyantly entertaining play." - New York Times

"A wise and truthful new play... The Herd does an awful lot really well... but it is rare indeed to find a contemporary play with such richly written roles for older characters." - Chicago Tribune

Acclaimed actor Rory Kinnear's debut play is a witty and heartfelt look at a family falling apart – and pulling together – when life doesn’t turn out quite the way they imagined.

It's Andy Griffith's twenty-first birthday. Not that he's counting. But his mother Carol is. Counting the minutes until he arrives, counting the unexpected guests, counting the times that something like this has happened before.

Rory Kinnear is an actor and playwright. He has played Hamlet and Iago at the National Theatre, Angelo in Measure for Measure at the Almeida, and Bolingbroke in Richard II for the BBC. The Herd is his first play.