“Remember the Exodus? Bad Tuesday. London went mad… That day, hope collapsed….people turned into animals. Somebody had to do something.”

The Red Helicopter is set in 2072. Following a cataclysmic economic and social decline, the UK has been abandoned by its inhabitants in a mass exodus.

Almost everyone got out. The only people left were the detritus of society – crooks, the mentally ill, the unwanted.

In a disused office somewhere in the ghost city of London lives a group of twenty young people.

They were all children in care. Either abandoned or orphaned, nobody loved them enough to take them on a plane and get them out of the country. Now they live in their own little society – a society that has survived, thanks to the organisational and political skill of their charismatic leader, a sixteen year old who calls himself ‘daddy’.

Daddy is a ruthless operator, whose rule is marked by superstition, violence and fear. The Red Helicopter is the story of the rebellion that topples him.

The Red Helicopter has been created in collaboration with participants of the Young Friend of the Almeida LAB, who explored the Almeida theatre’s season of plays to find the resonances and relevance to their own lives.