An accidental trilogy of updatings of Ibsen plays by female dramatists began with Tanika Gupta’s relocation of A Doll’s House to British-run India and Cordelia Lynn’s recreation of Hedda Gabler as the 21st-century Hedda Tesman.
Now Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s An Enemy of the People turns Dr Tomas Stockmann, the whistleblower who declares lucrative healing spa baths potentially fatal, into Dr Teresa Stockmann, a GP in a contemporary Norwegian town that might serve as the setting for The Killing.
This is the riskiest of the transitions because, while A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler are implicitly proto-feminist, An Enemy of the People is less gender-specific. Though Ibsen’s protagonist is a man in a 19th-century patriarchy, he is despised because the toxicity of the healing waters is an inconvenient truth for the local businessmen, especially his brother, the mayor.
The retelling, though, persuasively suggests that this Stockmann suffers the additional hostility of misogyny (insults such as “mad” and “humourless” sting harder). Alex Kingston’s ragingly defiant intelligence and confidence in the title role draws thoughts of Gina Miller, the anti-Brexit campaigner currently challenging the prorogation of parliament at the UK supreme court, whose earlier legal battles notoriously earned Britain’s highest judges a Daily Mail front page headline quoting the title of this Ibsen play.
These new emphases are justified; it had never previously struck me that the townspeople are offered hard and soft options for leaving the tourist market. Lenkiewicz reinforces this context with references to the alt-right, immigrants and fake news. With provocative topicality, the doctor’s scientific data is rejected by the mayor as merely opinion.
The excellent Malcolm Sinclair’s icily self-certain Mayor Mattsson – as Stockmann is now a married name, the brother is punctiliously given a new patronymic – earned boos at the curtain call.
But a measure of Ibsen’s greatness as a dramatist is that, even in so pointed a presentation, the play offers no safe haven to leavers or remainers. Dr Stockmann dares to suggest that the majority on a topic may be wrong, especially if expertise is ignored, but Ibsen also allows the possibility that the medic may be arrogantly ignoring democracy.
Adam Penford’s staging consistently grips, like one of the Scandi-noir TV thrillers that inspired its feel, and builds to a tremendous rain-lashed outdoor rally, at which those of all political positions are exposed as dripping wets. A great play is successfully re-aimed at Brexit, but all of Ibsen’s troubling nuances remain.
• At Nottingham Playhouse until 28 September.
