The best thing a revival of a classic play can do is remind you that this, what you’re going through right now, is neither new nor special. These thoughts, these feelings, these widespread societal problems have been here for centuries—and they will likely be here for centuries more. And while adaptor and director Robert Falls has certainly tipped the scales in his favor with his new version of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (from a translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, daughter of Karl), it’s not like those scales needed that much extra weight to begin with.
The play concerns a man, Dr. Thomas Stockmann (played here by Philip Earl Johnson), who resides in a small Norwegian resort town in the late 1800s. Stockmann’s brother Peter (the fantastic Scott Jaeck) is the mayor of the town, which presents a problem when Thomas’s suspicions are confirmed that the town’s baths, around which its entire economy rotates, are deeply contaminated due to industrial runoff and shortcuts taken during construction. He sees no solution but shutting down the baths entirely while repairs are made.
Thomas fails to foresee any resistance to his proposal. He thinks his relationship with his brother will be, if anything, a great help to his cause. In fact, he doesn’t even see this as “a cause”—just a fact. Of course people will do what needs to be done. The water in the spa is basically poison. He has a study to prove it. Why wouldn’t people listen to the facts and then act accordingly?
Stop laughing. Or maybe keep laughing. Enemy inspires quite a bit of laughter, most of it of the knowing variety, the kind you don’t always feel good about. Falls’s rewrite can go too far with its mentions of “fake facts” and “deplorables.” The play’s themes, especially as Falls articulates them, are abundantly clear; there’s no need to drag the zeitgeist into this. We know.
An Enemy of the People succeeds, though, because Ibsen is a master of themes that aren’t just articulated but complicated. It’s a play that traffics in ironies. The baths are meant to heal the sick, and yet they’re poison. Thomas is right in his beliefs but completely unprepared for the battle they unleash. Peter is both mayor of the town and chairman of the corporation that owns the baths. He comes close to pure evil, but his positions are entirely comprehensible.
If anything, the play is about a town, a people and a pair of brothers that are utterly doomed. Fix the baths or not, none of them are going to make it. Sure, the rich ones will probably turn out fine, if not better than fine. Stupidity and greed have conspired to create a situation that’s impossible to fix, but nobody will admit it. Then again, if they did, the play would be very short and entirely forgotten.
Falls is a master of scale, and the wide-open set, designed by Todd Rosenthal with rows of towering Nordic prosceniums framing the stage and a massive set of window panes hanging above it, makes the actors look miniscule—especially Johnson, who plays Thomas like an overgrown child, equal parts naivete and temper.
The set is backed by brightly colored tourism posters, matching the bold reds and greens and blues of the designer Ana Kuzmanic’s costumes. It isn’t until after the intermission, when Thomas is shut out from publishing his findings and calls a public meeting, that the clothes darken and the lights (designed by Robert Wierzel) grow dim.
Oh, that meeting. Oh, that speech. Thomas lays into the assembled townspeople, a large mass of mostly uncredited actors who crowd the stage and almost blend into the audience. He calls them stupid, blames them for everything that is wrong, calls for them to rise up against their monied oppressors. (He also dips into some light eugenics, which comes from the original Ibsen, and which Falls includes but also sidesteps.)
It’s a great speech, and Johnson knocks it out of the park. But it also wants to be something more. It reminds the audience that stupid people have been making stupid decisions for a long time now, but it fails in the final step: letting the audience know that we’re the stupid ones too.
Goodman Theatre. Adapted and directed by Robert Falls (from a translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling). With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs 20mins; one intermission.