An Enemy of the People Broadway Reviews

In this regard, Gold’s An Enemy of the People—notwithstanding its 19th-century costumes (by David Zinn) and sets (by the design collective dots) and elaborate period business (the loading of pipes, the heating of drinks, the lighting and snuffing of lamps)—feels pointedly modern, a quality that is brought to the fore in the production’s pivotal scene: a public meeting at which Stockmann tries to share his findings directly with the populace. The scene takes place after a short intermission during which members of the audience go onstage for free shots of aquavit at a shiny modern bar stamped with the logo of the brand providing the liquor. Breaking from the cozy naturalism of the production’s first half, Gold introduces elements of environmental theater: He brings up the house lights and treats the audience as part of the meeting; the characters address us directly, and a few spectators are even seated onstage to pad out the crowd. Circle in the Square’s in-the-round seating plan is ideal for this scene, a public square within a circle of observers.

The night I attended, during that scene, as has now been widely reported, three separate climate-change protesters popped up within the audience, their unifying cry being “no theater on a dead planet.” Part of the show, or actual protest? (We eventually realized it was not part of the show.) Their mid–mob scene timing was impeccable, and thankfully, didn’t destroy the mood. Strong—a seasoned stage actor whose credits include David Ives’ New Jerusalem, Theresa Rebeck’s Our House, and, most memorably, Amy Herzog’s The Great God Pan, in which he played a journalist delving into dark childhood memories—didn’t break character for a moment; after all, Thomas, a scientist himself, probably would be curious about the science behind it all.

Surely not the Ibsen, which aligns closely with their views and is a distant source of them. (The play was first performed, as “En Folkefiende,” in 1883.) Nor does it make sense that they would object to Sam Gold’s crackling and persuasive production, which drove those views home despite having to regroup once the protesters were ejected.

Strong is astounding as Thomas, resisting easy histrionics even as tensions reach their boiling point. Soft-spoken and even-keeled, he imbues the character with a deep well of sadness, not only for his late wife Katherine, but for the willful ignorance that’s afflicted his community.

Key to the play’s balancing act is Strong’s performance. Stockmann’s transition from being a servant of the people to their titular enemy is swift, and Strong expertly portrays the demise. The local newspaper staff ensure their support for Stockmann, declaring, “We are behind you like a wall.” But their backing flickers out as quickly as the extinguished candles between scenes.

Whatever the limit of the Gold shenanigans, they all feel very much in service of the message of a prescient play about the dangers of populist manipulation by those invested in the status quo.

No doubt fans of Succession, The Sopranos, and The White Lotus will be flocking to the Circle in the Square to see Strong and Imperioli do their thing in such close quarters. And they will not be disappointed. The actors are tremendous and completely lose themselves in the parts. But as audiences file out of the theater, they may also find themselves confronting some much thornier issues — issues that 140 years and thousands of miles have not dulled in the least. A–

For one, both Succession and this adaptation, directed by Sam Gold (who is married to Herzog) know how to crunchily position drama and wit, profundity and comedy, alongside one another. This brilliant Enemy of the People is notably funny in both its smarts and pacing, and even its later gathering darkness—when Stockmann is viciously trounced and isolated by his townsfolk—is studded with light, and the certainty of his self-preservation.

Their two leads are also a real asset here, and not for their famous names. As the brothers locking horns at the play’s center — the principled Dr. Thomas Stockmann and the political animal Mayor Peter Stockmann — Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli both bring a vigorous contemporary affect to the material. You can feel the toughness and tension, the roiling potential energy, of their more modern characters flexing within David Zinn’s costumes, which land us softly in the 1880s without feeling rigid in their period accuracy.

Gold’s sharply accelerating production reveals the horror of hypocrisy, but, without outside assistance, it doesn’t quite challenge the audience’s own complicity. By the time the third Extinction Rebellion protestor arose, most of the crowd met him with vehement boos. Minutes later, Dr. Stockmann was back on his own soapbox demanding that he himself be heard: “Ask yourselves—Is what I’m saying dangerous? Or is ignorance dangerous? You don’t have to agree with me, I just ask that you listen, because I don’t have any reason to be up here, ruining my career, making my family suffer, except that I care about this place.”

Verdict: Jeremy Strong changes our perception of Ibsen’s character in Herzog’s complicating adaptation

Purists may question Ms. Herzog’s fresh interpretation of Thomas, who in this version is less ornery and scorching in his denunciation of those who oppose him; even in his celebrated speech excoriating the disapproving townsfolk (audience members are recruited to represent them), Mr. Strong, taking his cue from Ms. Herzog, seems befuddled by his rejection, and afterward his designation as an “enemy of the people.” Thomas is notably less contemptuous, and less an advocate for a rigid meritocracy, than Ibsen’s original.

But have no doubt: Audiences on any every night of this limited 16-week run at Circle in the Square will witness a taut and exactingly directed production. Sam Gold’s An Enemy Of The People is one of the best play revivals of the current season to date, right up there with Purlie Victorious, besting Doubt and even Gold’s own, shakier Macbeth starring Daniel Craig in 2022.

While Gold’s revivals of the classics have tended to be less consistent than his incisive work on new plays — the ensembles of his King Lear and Hamlet both seemed at times to be all acting in different productions — his uniformly excellent cast here is very much on the same page, many of them doubling as singers and musicians in the scene transitions.

Whether such directness is successful in imparting something beyond the thrill of live performance – the cascading second half is, as expected, a showcase for Strong’s ability to portray a man on the brink – is, perhaps, up to the viewer. The appliqué of dialogue clearly invoking our current denial to 1880s Norway is at times jarring, at times moving, but in the hands of some veteran actors and immersive staging, at least a night of good New York theater.

An “Enemy” in which Strong had the moral advantage but was, say, annoying about it, or brusque, or purposefully alienating, would be one that’s more intriguingly unsettled, and would leave you staring into the seats across the stage a bit more urgently. This production has much to recommend it, and Strong in particular should return to the stage as often as he can. But it’s hard not to feel as though this “Enemy of the People,” in which as rootable as possible a hero is ground down by the forces of evil, ended up presenting an opportunity for the audience to put themselves on trial, and then, with a sigh of relief, exonerate themselves.

It’s the Covid pandemic all over again at the Circle in the Square, where a radically pared-down version of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” opened Monday. Best of all is Jeremy Strong’s Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who vividly recalls Dr. Anthony Fauci, especially when this good Norwegian doctor is warning a town about the dangers of an impending epidemic. The only problem with making “Enemy” a blow-by-blow retelling of Trump and Fauci’s battles is that what we all endured in real life a few years ago was so much more dramatic than what’s being offered onstage under the direction of Sam Gold.

But Gold, whose Broadway “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig was a bells-and-whistles disaster, nearly bungles it by serving the audience free shots of Linie Aquavit between the first and second halves from a hopping bar onstage. The otherwise riveted man next to me said, “This is so stupid.” Twice. I’m sure there is a high-minded rationale for the pop-up pub. Perhaps it’s there to confront us with our own hypocrisy, or lull us into a false sense of security before the untethered town meeting where Thomas is attacked. Whatever the reason, the silly trick flattens the tension the cast built and leaves it up to Strong to pick up the pieces. He ably does, thank goodness, and prevents his director from becoming the enemy of the play.

The production truly works best in the town meeting sequence, in which the doctor struggles to communicate his findings to the community. Audience members feel as if they are at the pub where the scene is taking place, with many invited to sit onstage and the rest offered complimentary shots of liquor. The scene also concludes with an act of mob violence (in which ice buckets are poured upon the doctor). It all makes for great environmental theater – and the unexpected addition of the climate change protesters must have made for a rowdy, on-point addition.

Gold’s attention to texture and tactile detail asks audiences to lean in; the play’s early scenes foster an engrossing intimacy later blasted apart by civic controversy. From the delicate border on Petra’s woolen shawl (costumes are by David Zinn) to the Rosemaling patterns painted on the white set (by the design collective Dots), the production creates a seductive and convincing world in the realm of the senses. But it took a startling ambush to jolt the moral of the story into the moment.

Because, how quickly the audience turned on the people interrupting their night out, enjoying their favorite star from the ostensibly anti-capitalist Succession. And, in an evening marked by performativity on both sides of the limelight, how unbelievably corny of the production to make Strong angrily toss leftover shot glasses into a trash pile after the town hall scene, as if to implicate and condemn the audience for having drank during his trials.

In this rendition of the play, when Stockmann vainly attempts to warn the citizens of the water’s danger at the town meeting they attack him by throwing bucketloads of ice cubes on him. In the next scene, it’s left to poor Jeremy Strong to painstakingly assemble the cubes into a neat pile. The actor’s cleaning up serves as a metaphor for a production so messy and ill-conceived it makes you wonder how the play has endured for nearly 150 years.