The Succession star delivers a bravura central turn in a rousing adaptation of a story that carries a discomforting contemporary relevance
or most people, the draw of An Enemy of the People, Sam Gold and Amy Herzog’s Broadway adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play, is not so much the chance to see a lesser-known work by the Norwegian dramatist updated for the present so much as the chance to see Jeremy Strong.
Herzog and Gold want you to think about the present, though maybe not so specifically or scornfully. Gold has ably directed this version, on the thrust stage at the Circle in the Square Theater, to appear as old-timey; scenic design by the collective dots invoke the Nordic gentry – bespoke meals, inherited cutlery, the lighting of oil lamps used as natural, evocative transitions. But Herzog has significantly altered the text.
And there are more not-so-subtle inflections meant to appeal to our modern thicket of competing loyalties, psychic bargains and political tangles; the fundamental, scary truth that all of us are acting just as much, if not more, to feeling than to reason.
That speech is delivered with the lights up, Strong standing atop the bar used for intermission, audience mixed among the townspeople – as overt as any invocation of the present, and sure to be a polarizing stage decision. It could be viewed as tacky .
Whether such directness is successful in imparting something beyond the thrill of live performance – the cascading second half is, as expected, a showcase for Strong’s ability to portray a man on the brink – is, perhaps, up to the viewer. The appliqué of dialogue clearly invoking our current denial to 1880s Norway is at times jarring, at times moving, but in the hands of some veteran actors and immersive staging, at least a night of good New York theater.
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