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.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
