Henrik Ibsen’s play about whistleblowing, entrenched power and populism moves back 142 years like a dramatic Tardis and is based on today’s wounded principles. The great Matt Smith stars in a dynamic and modern remake. An Enemy of the People By director Thomas Ostermeier from the Schaubühne in Berlin (English version by Duncan Macmillan). The production fine-tunes Ibsen’s feminism and brightens some bleak corners with humor. This is an urgent but biased presentation of an undecided game.
Public health and economic security. Institutional openness versus cover-up and distortion. Ibsen’s central concerns could not follow the pulse of today so closely. Dr Stockmann (Smith) discovers that the water to the municipal bathrooms is dirty. The case for closure is clear and Stockmann has great support from journalists; until his brother, a local government official, claims that the closure would destroy the town’s newfound prosperity. News about contamination is disappearing.
The action continues, mostly aided by modernizing touches. As information is suppressed, the blackboard is painted white; Bowie’s Changes stutter frequently in the background. The performances are natural but edgy: the diminutive part of Stockmann’s wife – here given both a decent job and a baby – is sharply defined by Jessica Brown Findlay; Zachary Hart is outstanding as the lanky renegade who blocks out unwelcome news with a headset. Smith himself made the subtle shift from stable belief to righteous anger. Stockmann’s confidence is tainted by arrogance as he makes his big speech to the townspeople. His furrowed brows and shining eyes become a little too emphatic: he believes what he says, but he also carries out his beliefs.
The storm on the heath is one of the fiercest storms I have ever seen: lightning, great thunder.
This speech is the crux of the production, proving its power and revealing a limitation. Smith delivers this directly to the audience with the house lights on. Viewers are asked to vote for or against and comment. I voted in favor without hesitation, but I would have done so more happily if the arguments had been more evenly distributed: if Paul Hilton’s officious brother had been less blatantly cantankerous; I wish it had been made clearer that financial collapse would lead to social poverty. It was refreshing to hear the audience loudly curse the state of schools, the NHS and sometimes explode. “Who said ‘bullshit’?” asked Priyanga Burford, tempered with her usual coolness. I later felt uncomfortable that I was so comfortably part of a consensus that no one had ever voiced an opinion to my contrary. Yet it was the game that made me question the comfort. One exciting evening More skewers.
No comfort King LearTheir psychic, fundamental and social destruction is at a theatrical pole far removed from Ibsen’s political realism. But tragedy can blow audiences away, as in Yaël Farber’s dark and swirling production.
Danny Sapani’s Lear is dominated by the bass note, the source of everything. The powerful boom of his voice declares authority; It may appear to be part of the air, as in a storm, but when distracted it makes it papery and thin. Cordelia’s “howl” at her death is terrifying, like a trapped creature; Not – as is often the case – a declaration of pain, but the pain itself.
Merle Hensel’s evocative, enabling design suspends rows of chainmail over a brick background; They sway like raindrops. Matter is shrouded and dissolved by Lee Curran’s gorgeous dim lighting. There is no realism to contain abandonment. The storm on the heath is one of the fiercest I have ever seen: flashes of lightning, great thunder. Matthew Tennyson’s Poor Tom is not just a frivolous man with spots on his face, but also a man-elf running around the stage with a huge sheet of polyethylene billowing like ectoplasm.
Often strange aspects King Lear If given new life, it becomes more believable when acted upon with faith in a dreamscape. Clarke Peters, as the fool (carrying an umbrella that gives him a music-hall vibe), seems to become an uneccentric clown, a genuine friend, and Lear himself. Gloria Obianyo saves Cordelia from being one of the most pill-like of Shakespeare’s women: Her refusal to flatter what could easily seem like arrogance turns into an act of rebellion, because she is the only one of the sisters to do so. wearing trousers; When he returns to military service, he looks all warrior.
The Almeida is a small stage, but Farber suggests a large space. Wide sympathies. The director talked about drawing on his South African upbringing. King Lear as a game in which people must “build houses under the sky”. Finally, the players gather around the flames (Lear’s “wheel of fire”) as if in a wild place. Dylan sings A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.
Inside double featureJohn Logan, screenwriter Downpour And GladiatorRothko received great acclaim with his play, Red, now examines the painful, productive relationships between film directors and their stars. Alfred Hitchcock claws at Tippi Hedren while shooting marnie; Vincent Price was persuaded by fear Witch Finder General By idealistic director Michael Reeves, who died shortly afterwards at the age of 25.
Jonathan Hyde, Ian McNeice, Rowan Polonski and Joanna Vanderham lightly inhabit their roles without full-blown impersonation. But there’s nothing light about Logan’s script. Filled with theories and tantalizing facts but lacking in driving force, this film wanders from one controversy to the next: the directors avoid abuses and are themselves commercially constrained; tough encounters off-screen can yield golden results on-screen; Fading talents and rising talents are equally hopeless. Echoes between two couples whose encounters are played side by side occasionally interlock, the couples chanting the same words in chorus, but the parallels do not coalesce. Backstories are mentioned but barely felt. Jonathan Kent, often insular as a director, can’t do much other than underline the overly deliberate script.
Nuggets shine. The setting, sensibly rendered in Anthony Ward’s design of brown wood and Staffordshire dogs, combines the cottage where Reeves worked with Hitchcock’s bungalow, designed as an English cottage on the Universal lot. Price borrows his wife’s makeup (she doesn’t need to explain that it’s “a mask”!). Hedren wears gloves to hide her dermatitis. Immaculate Grace Kelly described as ‘speram-splattered’ after surprising revelation: Are you coming again?
Star ratings (out of five)
An Enemy of the People ★★★★
King Lear ★★★★
double feature ★★