An Enemy of the People
It’s easy to see how Ibsen’s study of personal integrity versus civic interest could become a worthy but dull polemic.
Lucy Cohu (Katrine Stockman) and Antony Sher (Thomas Stockman) in The Enemy of the People at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Photo: Catherine Ashmore
Yet Daniel Evans’ assured, brisk and lively debut production as artistic director of the newly refurbished Crucible is refreshingly free of sermonising. Some of the credit for that has to lie with Christopher Hampton’s engaging translation.
But even more important is Antony Sher’s central performance as Thomas Stockmann, whose discovery that his hometown’s vital spa water is contaminated with a deadly virus threatens not only the community but also his own family. Both avuncular and comic, he finds a vital strain of humour that he never loses sight of, even as the piece gathers momentum and the doctor discovers that truth can be the victim of commercial interest.
If, in the final scenes, he becomes increasingly declamatory, we should perhaps put that down to Ibsen becoming more interested in argument than character.
As Stockmann’s brother, the town mayor, John Shrapnel presents a commanding study of a man bogged down in civic duty and interest, not an easily identified villain but a man who seems genuinely to believe that the facts should be buried in the interests of the majority.
Lucy Cohu, as Stockmann’s confused but loyal wife, looks far too young to be the mother of Susannah Fielding’s emphatic schoolteacher Petra, but she brings strength and dignity to the piece as the story reaches its climax.
It certainly adds something to the production that Evans has called in a large and enthusiastic local company to fill the stage for the vital scene of community confrontation in which Stockmann discovers that neither the public nor the media always want to hear the unvarnished truth.
If this is an indication of the way things are going to be with Evans at the helm, then it’s clear that the Crucible is once again in safe hands
Production information
- By:
- Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Christopher Hampton
- Management:
- Crucible, Sheffield
- Cast:
- Anthony Sher, Roger Bingham, Alex Blake, Chris Brailsford, Lucy Cohu, Susannah Fielding, Trystan Gravelle, Philip Joseph, Charles McClury, Daniel Poyser, Brodie Ross, John Shrapnel, Chook Sibtain
- Director:
- Daniel Evans
- Design:
- Ben Stones
- Sound:
- Ben Ringham and Max Ringham (also music)
- Lighting:
- Tim Mitchell
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Run sheet
- Crucible Sheffield
- February 17-March 20 2010
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