Three years after “A Doll’s House” and just a year after “Ghosts”, Ibsen may well have been feeling the weight of people’s wrath and indignation when he set pen to paper with “An Enemy of the People.” Thematically, the play was largely new ground for him but the controversy, criticism and personal attacks from those other two plays may well have been an ingredient in his creative soup when he tried to envisage what villagers with pitchforks and torches might look like in his world.
As with “Ghosts” (and to a lesser degree “A Doll’s House”) I found this play slow to grab me. It didn’t initially seem to be about anything terribly substantial or significant, but as it reached its midpoint and the stakes, reactions and motivations became clearer, its grabbing had well and truly taken hold.
I’ll briefly canvas some of those themes:
Truth versus majority opinion
Personal integrity versus the will of the people
Whistleblowing
Truth to power
The cost of making a stand
The role of the media and propaganda
Authority, power and corruption
Economic development versus health and wellbeing
Now I don’t for a minute expect anyone to know much about the play “Vox Populi,” which is very dear to my own heart and will debut this year, but the themes are almost a perfect match (I swear I didn’t copy it) and so I’m very much part of the target audience for this play.
Interestingly enough, Enemy of the People is not a term invented by Ibsen. The Ancient Romans referred to someone as hostis publicus if they were a public enemy. In the French Revolution, Robespierre and others referred to subversives as ennemi du peuple. Dictators throughout history… including Stalin, Mao, Goebbels and Trump (there, I said it)… have used the term to label and sideline those who get in the way of their plans. But Ibsen’s play has definitely given the term renewed currency.
The story (includes spoilers)
Dr Thomas Stockmann has been noticing people getting a bit sick in his small town, and believes it may be to those using the local municipal baths/spa owned by the city and some businesses. He gets the water tested and finds it’s heavily contaminated with bacteria. It is discovered that the chief cause is likely tannery owned by the Doctor’s father in law, but he decides to proceed. He writes a report for the local paper as a matter of public safety and the editor and publisher are totally on board with publishing it. But then the good doctor’s brother, the mayor of the town, who tells him that if he publishes the report it will badly hurt local businesses. But Doctor Stockmann I more concerned with public health and proceeds.
The publisher and editor remain gung-ho but when the mayor visits them and threatens them personally, they decide not to run the report. Finding all of his other avenues to advise the public shut down, he secures a room for a public forum. The mayor gets wind of this, selects a supposedly unbiased meeting chairman (the publisher) and they not only prevent Dr Stockman from talking but advise the meeting that he plans to cause great economic damage to the community by closing down the spa, and a vote is called to ostracise Dr Stockmann in the community as an enemy of the people.
Returning home, rocks are thrown through windows at Dr Stockmann’s home. His daughter as sacked as a teacher, he is sacked as a Doctor, his daughter is sacked as a teacher, one of his children is bashed at school. He follows up plans to buy tickets on a boat to take him overseas but that avenue is also blocked. Then the Doctor’s brother, the mayor, visits with more threats (fearing Dr Stockmann could still publish his details outside of the town). The mayor advises Dr Stockmann that the Doctor’s father-in-law had bought up shares in the spa due to word of mouth about its health concerns and that if Dr Stockmann continues to fight his cause he’ll let everyone know that was the scheme all along. The Doctor had been unaware of that and confronts his father in law who says news that the tannery had caused the contamination would destroy his businesses so he spent the money he would have given to his daughter to leverage his silence.
And amongst all this, the publisher and editor visit and apologise, but quickly turn back to threat mode and tell him to sign a bit of paper to say he got it all wrong and they will help defend him. The Doctor tells them where they can stick it. And as the threatening hordes gather outside, the Doctor brings his family together and vows to not back down, to slowly build a trusting community around him to break through this authoritarian control.
End spoilers.
Current relevance
See what I mean? Once it gets cranking there are a lot of very relevant themes in the mix. Unsurprisingly, it’s a play that finds particular peaks in times of relevance. It just so happens that this 143 year old play has found just such a time now.
The costs of making a stand, how public opinion can be weaponised and directed, economic success versus wellbeing, the punishment and ostracising of people who speak up, the role of the media and propaganda and the flexibility of truth are all very pertinent today.
Recently the show has seen revivals around the theatrical world. Matt Smith (the 11th Doctor Who… once I doctor I guess) has led a show on the West End, Jeremy Strong (of Succession) recently delivered a Tony winning performance in the lead role. Alex Kingston (Dr Who’s sometimes paramour River Song) led a British cast in a gender-swapped remake and Australia’s Kate Mulvaney did the same at the Belvoir Theatre.
Ibsen has quite cleverly used a seemingly minor issue as the springboard for how overwhelming a response can be, and by extension how much bigger the response would be to larger issues. Which isn’t to diminish the size of this issue or the importance of Dr Strockmann’s stand. He stands for keeping people safe… for abiding by the Hypocratic Oath… despite the eventual significant cost to himself. And his refusal to put his name to the lie may well have inspired Arthur Miller when a similar safe exit is offered to John Proctor in “The Crucible.”
How quickly and easily the crowd, or even the majority, can be turned against someone (and in this case a truthsayer and whistleblower) couldn’t be more relevant. Talk Show hosts/comedians being cut, news stories on shows like 60 minutes being cut, journalists and subject experts being ridiculed and labelled as enemies of the people… and the way in which ostracisation is used to shut down unpopular views is absolutely centre stage in the world today.
I’d suggest, however, from my own experience on attempts to silence me on a much smaller scale, that instead of pitchforks and torches, opinions and movements deemed unpopular or inconvenient by inner circles and powers that be are met in the sewer of the social media public square with unfriending, dislikes, public denouncements and even phone calls.
Video versions
Despite the renewed interest in this play, it’s hard to find video productions to watch (which ideally I’m trying to do with each play as a comparison against the script). No doubt some of the ones I mentioned here will find their way to Digital Theatre, or National Theatre at Home, or Marquee TV before long. There’s also a Steve McQueen version floating about somewhere (couldn’t find it) and a version was also produced for Australia’s ABC in 1958. Good luck finding that.
I did manage to find two. One was a contemporary Scottish take from 1980 on the BBC, but it was all a bit Father Ted meets Coronation Street for me so I gave up on it rather early. Maybe it deserves better attention than I gave it.
The other version I found was (speak of the devil) Arthur Miller’s adaptation presented on National Education Television in 1966, with James Daly in the lead (and reasonably well known current actor Timothy Daly, his 10 year old son, playing his 10 year old son in his first TV acting gig).
It’s a great production although your remote control hand will be kept busy (it’s in 12 parts, and the volume is quite low so every time a part finishes, your TV is yelling at you again). But it’s worth seeing. Very simple, unadorned staging but it displays the characters, the themes, the stakes and the outcome quite clearly.
Would it work in Goulburn today
Yes. Absolutely. Well it certainly could, and I’d love to give it a shake. It would at the very least be controversial, as good theatre so very often is, with some people saying “hey this is like such and such”, and counter arguments suggesting “no, it’s nothing like that at all.” And there’s always the chance that those being reflected on stage may not recognise that reflection.
As much as I’m a big fan of the script being the script being the script, there are some bits that are regularly modified and in my opinion should be. Some small amounts of text are into eugenics, and the advanced abilities of some races, and while it’s useful to hold the playwright accountable for all of the words, these are points he makes infrequently and in passing and diminish his portrayal as a good and decent man. But as others have shown, you can set it in a Scottish village, have it about a mum rather than a dad, you can make a lot of these changes without changing the dialog very much at all (and of course you are free to pick the translation you prefer).
On a personal note, many of the issues that inspired me to write “Vox Populi” are present in this work. Some elements are uncannily similar, and again I have never read, seen or heard summarised this work before. But I HAVE read and seen the Crucible a number of times. And I have been inspired by many works that deal with corrupt authority, making a stand and the cost of integrity. Those things are in my play, but they are also very much in the play.
Certainly one of the Great Plays, deceptively wrapped in a small town dilemma, and a play that … as long as power, corruption and silencing the truth exist … won’t be retired any time soon.
Materials accessed:
“An Enemy of the People” - script. Available many places. Here’s a copy from coldreads.wordpress.com.
“An Enemy of the People” - film (1966). NET - In 12 parts on youtube starting with Part 1.
“An Enemy of the People” - film (1980). BBC - I didn’t finish watching this version, but here is the link.
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