An Enemy of the People (Nottingham Playhouse)
Sept 28, 2019 23:46:25 GMT
Nicholas and learfan like this
Post by David J on Sept 28, 2019 23:46:25 GMT
Saw this last Thursday on my holiday to the north. Having seen the 2016 Chichester production I was excited to see this again with Alex Kingston in the lead role.
Stupidly I got the wrong time and so I got in 30 minutes late but having known the story I had no problem catching up, getting in before Dr Stockmann meets her brother about her report, and it gave me the opportunity to see how much Ibsen cared about writing about characters, as I expressed on The Doctor thread, theatreboard.co.uk/post/307762/thread.
Perhaps one of the most fundamental principles of writing characters is to make them flawed. As the play goes on it becomes less about the poisoned water baths and the power struggles between Stockmann and her brother, the Mayor, but how people can be so fickle, turn on a dime, or take the truth and make it political.
And at the heart is Dr Stockmann, who you obviously side with from the start as she tries to get the truth out. But gradually you get to see she has an ego problem as she forgets the truth of the matter and uses it to stoke her sense of superiority over everyone. It makes the Mayor look the reasonable one.
I remember thinking that Hugh Bonneville's 19th century Stockmann was more restrained who only broke during the public meeting. Alex Kingston plays this modern Stockmann as out and out activist with a never ending spew of incendiary words (and plenty of swear words in this version) and boy does she give a fiery performance, at moments acting like a teenager in her defiance against her brother. Such brilliant performances from her and Malcolm Sinclair's icy Mayor.
And can I just say what an old-trooper Sinclair is who knows how to give a clearly enunciated performance. Even when everybody was miked his he sounded like the voice of god sitting at the back of the auditorium. Otherwise there's not one weak performance in this
Again the production shows how Ibsen is relevant as ever. Whilst the 2016 production had everyone drawing comparisons with Brexit, I could see the parallels between Stockmann's rants in the public meeting to the shrieks from the MPs in the Commons last week or Greta Thunberg's "I want you to panic" rhetoric. They could learn a lot from Ibsen.
I prefer the Chichester production for the scale it had, but I won’t hold it against this more intimate version. Perhaps the modern update fell short in the last scene (who would get away with drawing kids away to their own unofficial, thrown together school in the western world). But otherwise great production
Stupidly I got the wrong time and so I got in 30 minutes late but having known the story I had no problem catching up, getting in before Dr Stockmann meets her brother about her report, and it gave me the opportunity to see how much Ibsen cared about writing about characters, as I expressed on The Doctor thread, theatreboard.co.uk/post/307762/thread.
Perhaps one of the most fundamental principles of writing characters is to make them flawed. As the play goes on it becomes less about the poisoned water baths and the power struggles between Stockmann and her brother, the Mayor, but how people can be so fickle, turn on a dime, or take the truth and make it political.
And at the heart is Dr Stockmann, who you obviously side with from the start as she tries to get the truth out. But gradually you get to see she has an ego problem as she forgets the truth of the matter and uses it to stoke her sense of superiority over everyone. It makes the Mayor look the reasonable one.
I remember thinking that Hugh Bonneville's 19th century Stockmann was more restrained who only broke during the public meeting. Alex Kingston plays this modern Stockmann as out and out activist with a never ending spew of incendiary words (and plenty of swear words in this version) and boy does she give a fiery performance, at moments acting like a teenager in her defiance against her brother. Such brilliant performances from her and Malcolm Sinclair's icy Mayor.
And can I just say what an old-trooper Sinclair is who knows how to give a clearly enunciated performance. Even when everybody was miked his he sounded like the voice of god sitting at the back of the auditorium. Otherwise there's not one weak performance in this
Again the production shows how Ibsen is relevant as ever. Whilst the 2016 production had everyone drawing comparisons with Brexit, I could see the parallels between Stockmann's rants in the public meeting to the shrieks from the MPs in the Commons last week or Greta Thunberg's "I want you to panic" rhetoric. They could learn a lot from Ibsen.
I prefer the Chichester production for the scale it had, but I won’t hold it against this more intimate version. Perhaps the modern update fell short in the last scene (who would get away with drawing kids away to their own unofficial, thrown together school in the western world). But otherwise great production
