Review: AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, Duke Of York's Theatre

It takes balls to do what German auteur Thomas Ostermeier does in An Enemy of the People. Just after the interval the Duke of York's theatre morphs into a live episode of Question Time. The house lights are switched on and we are asked what we think of the play’s central dilemma. Silence lingers. Then someone gingerly raises their hand, is offered a mic and proffers an opinion.

Dr Stockmann has discovered that the water vital to the economic life of his spa town is poisonous, polluted by a nearby factory. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place: truth vs money. A muddy quagmire tangled with the needs of his family and community lies in the gulf between them as the authorities try to silence him.

But that dilemma is, spoiler alert, our dilemma too. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ll have noticed that the world is lurching from one #permacrisis to another. Truth is increasingly an afterthought. And speaking it can get you killed (just look at Alexei Navalny). That isn’t even to mention the looming environmental destruction.

As Matt Smith’s Stockmann implores us “we are sleepwalking into the apocalypse.” So what do we think?

As much as I admire the fourth wall shattering audacity, I also cringe. The lo-fi set stained in stylish graffiti gibberish on walls, the dad rock playlist and live David Bowie cover, the tacky paint fight; Ostermeier’s production is a bit too eager to be edgy in a midlife crisis sort of way.

Explosive monologues saddled with politics are hurled at us without the humanity to anchor them. Stockmann’s dilemma ought to be the beating heart of the show, but there is barely a dramatic pulse to breathe life into it. Ostermeier is interested in the political questions but the human drama that ought to underpin it shouldn’t be window dressing.

Interminable one-dimensionality plagues the performance as a result. Smith plays Stockmann like a puppy bouncing up and down excitedly eyeing up a treat. Paul Hilton’s Peter, the mayor of the spa town and Stockmann’s bureaucrat brother, is a six-foot scowl slithering around in a three-piece suit.

It’s all too obvious. Hilton might as well have a moustache to twirl. Maybe devil horns too. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if they swapped roles? If Smith, the charismatic former Dr Who heartthrob played the slimy bureaucrat, and Hilton, who is seemingly only cast as villains, played the hero who stands up for truth and morality? Dare I say that would be far more revealing. 

Theatre is increasingly risk averse, and anything that wants to slap its audience in the face deserves a hat doff. But a Hyde Park Corner polemic in the West End is just not as radical as it thinks it is. Plus how fist-clenchingly anti-capitalist can you really be when you are charging up to £195 for a ticket?

An Enemy of the People plays at the Duke of York Theatre until 6 April

Photo Credits: Manuel Harlan

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