It’s that same unflinching sense of duty that induced Arthur Miller to adapt the work in the wake of McCarthyism. Ibsen had tapped into the spirit of "truthiness" over a hundred years before Colbert. The political parallels to the current era, be it stem cells, off-shore drilling, or what have you, are obvious, perhaps too much so. These parallels make the play vulnerable to staging by intellectually careless companies; it seems that the Phoenix Ensemble has followed through on that vulnerability.
At the center of Ibsen’s modern cynicism in An Enemy of the People is Dr. Stockmann’s attack on the stupidity of the solid majority of his town in Act IV, but in this production the speech has a very different impact than Ibsen intended. Anti-populism, expressed by a man beaten down by political reality, was not a new theme—Plato made the same point with his philosopher-kings—but it flew in the face of every common sentiment of Ibsen's time. No one, in the 1870s or today, has known how to deal with the conundrums Ibsen raised. Unfortunately, when you apply this argument to a New York setting, the connotation is of comfortable New York art patrons who look dismissively at people living anywhere else in the country (in Jesusland, as a popular internet map refers to every non-dark blue American state).
This bastardized elitism is not the only element of this Enemy of the State that violates Ibsen’s spirit. Rather than show any realism or nuance in the plays’ characters, the Phoenix Ensemble’s production features almost nothing but caricatures. Particularly vulnerable is Jospeh Menino’s Mayor Stockmann, who lies somewhere between the Grinch and Mr. Burns. He makes Lionel Barrymore’s realism as Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life seem like Marlon Brando’s. The other perpetrator is Michael Surabian’s Aslaksen, who might have driven me to violence if he had said the word “moderation” in that same intentionally pronounced manner one more time. If there’s any hope to be found, it’s in Kelli Holsopple as Dr. Stockmann’s fiery independent daughter Petra. Ms. Holsopple is the only actor who seems to understand that realism is the entire reason why Ibsen gets staged anymore.
With an already turgid translation that should have never been used for any staging after 1980, director Amy Wagner has her cast rush through the text without letting anything sink in (at two hours and 40 minutes, I’m sure the rushed delivery was intended to shorten the play to under three hours). Rushed, nearly inaudible delivery is bad enough with a contemporary play; it’s even worse when “egad” and “Pah” are not even close to the most antiquated terms used.
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