HOW should a director approach a classic? Offer a radical update or respect the period and setting of the original? Both methods may be equally valid, as proved by two current revivals of Ibsen and Chekhov, which are poles apart yet equally spectacular.
Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People, now at the Duke of York's in a production by Thomas Ostermeier, is a play that positively invites rebooting. First staged in 1883, it shows Dr Stockmann, the medical officer of a small spa town, discovering that the baths on which the place's livelihood depends are toxic. He expects to be hailed as a hero. Instead, he is condemned by the local mayor, who happens to be his brother, and finds his initial champions in the press turning against him. It is a classic study of how the whistleblower is vilified when he threatens a community's wealth and is the prototype of many plays and films, including Steven Spielberg's Jaws.
Herr Ostermeier, who originally staged the production in German and now supervises the English version, doesn't mess about. He places the action in today's world: Matt Smith's Dr Stockmann runs a local rock group and his marriage to his teacher-wife is distinctly edgy. David Bowie's Changes provides a constant background, but the big innovation is to turn the town-hall meeting, where Dr Stockmann states his case, into an audience-involving event. The house-lights go up, Mr Smith launches into a tirade claiming 'our whole society is polluted' and we are invited to vote on the issue and to offer our opinions.
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