‘Enemy of the People’: The Berliner version

Where’s that deafening blast of David Bowie coming from, did you say? The Brooklyn Academy of Music, bastion of high art? Are they producing rock concerts these days?

Look again.

The Schaubühne Theatre from Berlin is back in Brooklyn, storming through the BAM’s cavernous Harvey Theatre with a daring, defiant version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Don’t act surprised— thank the Berliners, instead, for breathing new life into this clunky 1882 classic that tends to be too preachy for its own good.

This aggressive, hard-hitting interpretation sets Ibsen’s stilted, stuffy old chestnut in modern times, wherein its dramatis personae dress in blue jeans rather than 19th Century waistcoats and play together in a rock band in their spare time.

Doctor vs. mayor

Director Thomas Ostermeier, the German wunderkind who first brought Ibsen to Brooklyn in 2006 (Hedda Gabler, set in a glass house where people threw stones and suffered the consequences), likes to contemporize his classics. The question, of course, is why, and to what effect?

It takes a moment to adjust to the breakneck speed of Ostermeier’s production, as his actors hurtle through the play (in German, with supertitles). At first their version sticks to Ibsen’s well-worn story: Stockmann, a highly principled local doctor in a small Norwegian town, has discovered that the water at the local spa is polluted. Stockmann insists on publishing his discovery in the local papers, so that the water pipes bringing bacteria in from local factories will be rerouted.

But Stockmann faces a formidable obstacle in the form of his own brother Peter, the town’s mayor. Peter is dead-set against Stockmann’s plan, fearing that the spas would be closed and, as a result, the town’s main source of income would be destroyed. Accordingly, Peter pressures the local newspaper not to publish Stockmann’s findings.

Audience as courtroom

Up to this point, Ostermeier follows Ibsen’s script, alternating domestic scenes (where Stockmann and his wife cook, clean, care for their baby, and play rock music with their friends) with scenes in the newspaper office, where the local journalists (the boys in Stockmann’s band) struggle with his demands to go public on the issue. Ultimately, the journalists cave in to Peter’s political pressure. But Stockmann refuses to be silent, and demands a town meeting.

At this point Ostermeier pulls the rug out from under Ibsen, to Ibsen’s benefit. In the original script, Act IV calls for a “large gathering of citizens of all classes.” I’ve seen it performed effectively at the Royal National Theatre in London, with a crowd of 40 or so actors on stage. But no production that I’ve seen matches the power of Ostermeier’s unorthodox choice.

Suddenly, the house lights go up, and the crowd becomes all 800 of us in the audience. Stockmann takes his place at a podium and begins a ten-minute tirade (a free-wheeling updating of Ibsen’s text) on the tyranny of today’s “I” culture – one that’s obsessed with the self, blogs, websites and, above all, personal gain and wealth.

Liberals vs. truth?

“Our entire civilization is polluted!” Stockmann cries. On and on he rants over the loss of family, community, civic responsibility – and indeed, of sanity. “This society deserves to go down!” he shouts.

In effect, Ostermeier’s brilliant coup de théâtre creates a public forum in which we, the audience, participate. As Stockmann continues his diatribe, cast members grab hand microphones and run into the audience, offering us an opportunity to respond. On the night I attended, audience responses included: “The economy is the crisis!” and “Truth’s worst enemy is the liberal majority,” and so on. Meanwhile, Stockmann and other characters respond in English, and so the spontaneous dialogue between cast and audience continues.

The price Stockmann ultimately pays is the failure of his objectives, and ostracism. So to what avail has he stood on his principles? For what purpose? Has society been improved by his efforts? How does a truth-seeker become a zealot, and then, in turn, a fanatic?

New German identity

Ostermeier’s production takes the play a step further. In his counter-culture interpretation of Ibsen’s classic, a new idealism can be discerned: the voice of a new generation in Germany struggling to disengage itself from its recent catastrophic history. This vergangenheitsbevältigung – meaning “coming to terms with the past” — seeks courage, dignity, integrity and strength through a new identity, personified by Stockmann.

At the end he’s left alone with his wife, drinking beer and facing the loss of his practice, eviction and possibly prison. But take a closer look— in this production, the Stockmanns don’t look too unhappy.

“The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone,” says Stockmann, in Ibsen’s original. Though the line gets drowned out in this high-volume updating, the gist of it remains, resonating with mixed meaning. (Consider, for example, President Obama’s isolation, in his lonely second term.)

This evening of theater isn’t necessarily an entertaining experience— that’s not Schaubühne’s intent. But it’s always provocative and enlightening. After all, Schaubühne follows the Brechtian principle that “theater should function like a courtroom— two trials an evening, each lasting an hour and a quarter.”

In this production, the Schaubühne puts modern society on trial, including us – and we feel the indictment.

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/ Don’t wanna be a richer man/ Just gonna have to be a different man.”

So go the lyrics of the David Bowie song – the leitmotif of this revelatory production.