Tag Archives: Henrik Ibsen

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

★★★★

Duke of York’s Theatre

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AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE at the Duke of York’s Theatre

★★★★

“The performances are superb. Matt Smith, as Dr. Thomas, owns the stage.”


Before Henrik Ibsen even became a playwright, he was well known for his controversial, anti-establishment opinions. His early works, and poetry, revealed his rebellious nature as he challenged convention and criticised society. His dramatic works cut deeper into the darker side, holding up a mirror to human nature and its inherent hypocrisies. Inevitably he was met with divided opinion. “An Enemy of the People” was no exception, and Thomas Ostermeier’s modern adaptation (translated by Duncan MacMillan) looks set to be equally divisive.

Co-adapted by Florian Borchmeyer, the play’s structure is also two-sided; the interval acting as a sharp watershed between two very different landscapes, even though it overlooks the same, indeterminate, Middle England spa town. It opens with a song. The main players comprise a shaky, indie-folk-rock band, the initial conversations breaking away from the music then weirdly segueing into Bowie’s ‘Changes’. It is difficult to determine whether this subplot has a purpose, or whether it is a surreal contrivance, but it soon gets forgotten anyway. The music is definitely not their day job.

Dr. Thomas Stockmann is the chief medical officer at the town’s spa baths. He has discovered that the spa’s water is contaminated. Wanting to do all he can to alert the citizens he enrols newspaper hacks Hovstad and Billing to run the story in order to prevent the town being poisoned – possibly to death. He faces opposition in the shape of his brother Peter, the town mayor who sees the closure of the baths as the death knell to the town. There is tension too between Thomas and his wife Katharina, the local upstanding yet radical schoolteacher.

The dialogue bounces along breezily, occasionally bogged down with the earnestness of late-night-student-digs debates. Yet the writing recognises this pitfall and manages to pre-empt the charges and poke fun at itself. “You sound like an undergraduate” quips Thomas to Hovstad. The blackboard walls of Jan Pappelbaum’s set are strewn with pseudo-scholarly slogans, which are eventually whitewashed over – figurately and literally. The arguments that are dished up, however, are chillingly pertinent and so close to the bone that there isn’t enough skin left to make crawl.

 

 

The performances are superb. Matt Smith, as Dr. Thomas, owns the stage. A lone wolf howling at the moon, his single-mindedness streaked with a naivety and good intentions, while Jessica Brown Findlay’s Katharina stands by him, despite being constantly at the end of her tether. Shubham Saraf, as journalist Hovstad, feeds Thomas’ fervour, encouraging his crusade like Lady Macbeth. Is he after the truth, though, or just a good story? His own quest for the truth dissolves in the saliva from the Judas kiss he plants on Thomas. Fellow journo Billing is ultimately equally disloyal – Zachary Hart giving an outstanding performance as the comic foil. There is much humour too in Paul Hilton’s mayor, Peter. As smooth and slippery as an eel his words drip from his angular grimace. The naked face of capitalism and pragmatism that is all too familiar on our front pages. Katharina’s father, Morten Kill, is an imposing figure in Nigel Lindsay’s hands. Bizarrely an Alsatian dog is also in his hands, presumably a metaphor for the dark, shady, business-minded aspects of Kill’s character beneath the leftist veneer. The dog is too friendly and well behaved to pull it off, however. Conflicts of interest also plague Aslaksen, the newspaper’s publisher. Priyanga Burford brilliantly swings from devout, self-serving pragmatism to obsequious cowardice in a glorious deadpan and often funny performance.

The second act is a completely different beast. Much snappier and forceful, it is full to the brim with contemporary, post-Brexit, post-Covid references and up-to-the-minute echoes of modernist realpolitik. It rips down the fourth wall completely, inviting the audience into a ‘Question Time’ scenario. It is obvious there are some plants in the audience, but the effect is immediate and chilling. The real coup is Matt Smith’s tirade at the podium. Brilliantly and convincingly delivered. Smith is flawlessly believable, earning his ovation, whether one agrees with him or not.

A paint splattered transition leads us into the final, short act. The journey there has been almost as messy as the stage now is (I pity the backstage crew) but it has been swaggering, anarchic and fearless. And we are rewarded with an unexpected hook. In the course of the last two hours is has been difficult to decide whether Thomas is an enemy of the people or an enemy to himself. A final twist – a mere meeting of eyes – will help you decide.


AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE at the Duke of York’s Theatre

Reviewed on 21st February 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BACKSTAIRS BILLY | ★★★★ | November 2023
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING | ★★★★ | February 2023

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

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When We Dead Awaken

When We Dead Awaken

★★★★

The Coronet Theatre

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When We Dead Awaken

When We Dead Awaken

The Coronet Theatre

Reviewed – 5th March 2022

★★★★

 

“Bang-Hansen’s elegant direction is right at home in the Coronet’s beautifully restored interiors”

 

When We Dead Awaken is Ibsen’s last play, and the master was very well aware of that as he was writing it. In consequence, it has a distinctly different tone to his earlier, better known works such as An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, and A Doll House, to name just a few. The language in When We Dead Awaken shifts between the lyrical and the brutal. The play is haunting, and also elusive in its final, elegiac notes. Added to all that is the chance to see the play acted (mostly) in Norwegian, performed by (mostly) Norwegian actors. These are just some of the features that make this production, by The Norwegian Ibsen Company with the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill, a highlight of the still evolving 2022 theatre season in London.

When We Dead Awaken begins slowly, but (spoiler alert) like the avalanche which makes its appearance at the end of the play, its gathering power draws you in and holds you fast, even in the knowledge of certain obliteration. And as always in Ibsen’s plays, the endings are not up for sunny reinterpretations. Viewed in this way, the confrontations between an aging artist, Arnold Rubek (Øystein Røger), his young wife Maia (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and his muse, Irene (Ragnhild Margrethe Gudbrandsen) take on a mythic quality as they struggle to decide what is more important. The life of an artist? The work of art itself? Is it worth giving up a chance of family and children to pursue your art? What happens if you become successful, but still feel something lacking in both art and life? What happens if success feels like death? Into this mix of conflicting situations, we can be pretty sure, Ibsen is pouring the accumulated frustrations of his own life as an artist. But there’s always at least one wild card in play in Ibsen’s dramas, and this arrives in the form of a bear hunter named Ulfhejm (James Browne). It’s Ulfhejm who separates the unhappy couple. It’s the crude and brutal hunter who entices Maia away from her husband, and, ironically, gives the artist one last chance to reconnect with his muse, Irene. And it is Ulfhjem who entices them all up the mountainside where revelations and endings come together in surprising, but somehow appropriate ways.

Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s elegant direction is right at home in the Coronet’s beautifully restored interiors and its surprisingly spacious stage. His actors move with assurance around a set design by Mayou Trikerioti that evokes fin de siécle decay —the wreckage of an excessive past spilling out on stage where no one can ignore it any longer. With some deft sound design and music by Peter Gregson, it’s easy to get drawn into a space where resort hotels become remote mountainsides in a subtle change of lights (Amy Mae.) Special mention should also be made of the ease with which the Norwegian actors manage this difficult play in two languages. Listening to a play in a language one doesn’t know is always revealing. In this production of When We Dead Awaken, Norwegian sounds clipped and precise. The lyrical struggles a bit, but then it should. And every so often the unfamiliar becomes familiar again as English words peek through the Norwegian in odd pronounciations, reminding us that modern English retains more than a few Norwegian words. Andrea Bræin Hovig and Øystein Røger establish a palpable sense of tension in their scenes in Norwegian together, which contrast nicely with the scenes in English when Irish actor James Browne is on the stage. The subtitles, when necessary, are discreetly projected onto a curtain upstage.

The main disappointment of this production is — you guessed it — the avalanche. But it is hard to argue with Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s pragmatic choice to have the avalanche always on stage, in a sense, in Mayou Trikerioti’s set design. So there is no dramatic movement on stage at the end of the play. The actors simply narrate the final moments. On the whole, this production of When We Dead Awaken shows itself up to the challenge of Ibsen’s last drama. It cleverly avoids falling into the traps that Ibsen has set for the overconfident theatre maker.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Tristram Kenton

 


When We Dead Awaken

The Coronet Theatre until 2nd April

 

Recently reviewed at this venue:
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge | ★★★★ | November 2021

 

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