January 19, 1998: Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, in a new version by Christopher Hampton; National Theatre / Olivier.
The huge, deep stage of the Olivier and its great revolve are pressed into full service in this vigorous, well-focused revival with Ian McAllen as Doctor Stockmann. Our vantage point was high in the circle, but the complex polyscenic structure on the stage sometimes seemed as tall as we were high. The scenes represented included the Stockmann house — both parlor and dining room, the newspaper office, and the hall where the public meeting is held late in the play. In fact, these scenes are structurally related physically; the action moves with exceptional fluidity from exterior to interior and back again, the revolve sometimes moving slowly as the scene progresses. The background of multiple roofs of townhouses, set just below the rim of high hills, and with a sky full of constantly moving, sometimes menacing clouds, gave an unparalleled sense of unity to the whole production. This was a living, breathing town, whose inhabitants were all thrown together and whose individual actions could not but affect everyone around them.
The play moves with steadily mounting effect. The central, driving force is of course Doctor Stockmann himself, played by an actor seemingly ideally suited for the role. McKellan’s Stockmann is always at full throttle, intense, articulate, and as clear-sighted about issues of moral integrity as he is near-sighted about his own character and the impact it has on other people. The translator, Christopher Hampton, points out the frequency with which the Norwegian word “tøre” — to dare — is used in the play (even more so than in Hedda Gabler). The most daring person here is Stockmann, who is ready to risk all he holds dear, including wife and family, in the service of a socially useful truth. By comparison, the rest of the townspeople, including the elders and the Mayor himself, Peter Stockmann, the brother of the central character, do not dare at all: they dare not go against public opinion. And when they encounter someone who does dare so, their vindictiveness and vengefulness are swift and merciless — and catastrophic. Stockmann seems constantly surprised at the constantly emerging cowardliness and craven capitulation of his fellow townspeople; this is a measure of his naïveté, but also of his idealism. Once he has discovered that the baths, a public facility for which he himself had the original idea, are being fed by bacteria-infested water likely to make people sick whether they drink it or bathe in it, it is simply a matter of common sense to him that this fact be announced to townspeople and that appropriate measures (whatever expense they might entail) be taken to clean things up. He cannot anticipate the great extent to which vested interests in the baths’ financial well-being might be opposed to the revelation of facts that might result in the closure of the baths for upward