Matt Smith as Thomas Stockmann
Duke of York’s Theatre, London
February 2023
Photograph by Manuel Harlan
077 – An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen
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A small coastal town in Southern Norway is becoming famous for the recuperative waters of its newly founded spa. However, a local doctor who serves as the Spa’s medical officer has discovered that the waters that feed the spa are contaminated. He feels bound to bring his news to public attention, but such a revelation will threaten the very livelihood of the town. Those in authority are therefore determined to stop him from publicising his findings. The doctor is equally determined that the truth must be told, but his principled stand will make him “an enemy of the people”.
This is Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, a fable of truth and lies, politics and power, and the challenge and costs of pursuing an unpopular crusade to speak truth to power. It’s a story of ‘fake news’, manipulation of the media, the dangers of populism, and the environmental cost of capitalism. No wonder it strikes a chord in our time, for as we record this episode there are two major new productions of An Enemy of the People on the world stage. Here in London, German director Thomas Ostermeier brings his striking contemporary adaptation to the West End, with Matt Smith starring as the crusading Doctor; and in New York, Jeremy Strong, famous as Kendall Roy in the TV series Succession, takes on the role in a version by American playwright Amy Herzog.
I’m delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Ibsen expert, Professor Kirsten Shepherd. I was privileged to talk with Kirsten in episode 74 when we discussed Ibsen’s wonderful play Ghosts.
Plays by Henrik Ibsen covered on The Play Podcast:
001 – A Doll’s House
074 – Ghosts
Kirsten Shepherd
Kirsten Shepherd is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. She received her B.A. in English from Yale University, after which she spent a year studying Nordic Literature and Languages at the University of Oslo before earning her D.Phil. from Oxford. She has held teaching posts at the Universities of Birmingham and North Carolina State before joining the English faculty at Oxford in 2007.
Kirsten’s research interests include the relationship between modernism and theatrical performance, and more specifically for our purposes, the writings of Henrik Ibsen. Her first published book wasIbsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900 published back in 1997, since when her other publications include The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science (2020), Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2016), and Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett (Columbia University Press, 2015), as well as numerous contributions to journals and critical collections.
Kirsten has been a guest on Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” on the episode devoted to Ibsen, and has acted as consultant on productions at the National Theatre, the Oxford Playhouse, the Old Vic, and at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
Recommended Play
Kirsten recommended The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen.
The Footnotes to our episode on Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People include notes about the source of Ibsen’s plot, his attack on the integrity of the press, his pitting of progressive thinkers versus conservatives, and the controversy in Dr Stockmann’s tirade at the public meeting.
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Douglas
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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