Synopses & Reviews
Should you always tell the truth, no matter what the personal cost? In Henrik Ibsen's classic play, An Enemy of the People, Dr. Tobias Stockman discovers that the town's health spa water is contaminated. When he announces this, he is at first hailed as a hero by his fellow citizens. But his campaign to have the spa closed for repair threatens the economy of the town, and Dr. Stockman finds himself an enemy of the people, facing hostility and ridicule for insisting on telling a truth that others do not want to hear. Written as a response to his own critics, Ibsen's 1882 fable has modern echoes, hailing the courage of those willing to stand against the crowd.
Synopsis
Nicholas Rudall, whose acclaimed translations of Ibsen and the Greek classic playwrights have brought a fresh perspective to the American theater, turns his talents to one of the Norwegian dramatist's most provocative plays. In a rebuke to the Victorian notion of community as well as to the blessings of democracy, Ibsen creates a situation in which one man must stand alone to face the forces allied against him. In a coastal town, a community-minded physician has promoted the development of public baths in order to attract tourists. When he discovers that the water supply for the baths is contaminated and attempts to publicize the failing and correct it, he and his family are all but driven out of the town he was trying to save.