Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (1882) is basically Jaws with an invisible shark: Ever since the founding of the local mineral baths, small town X has enjoyed a big fat financial boom. Tourists are flocking there to take the waters. But then along comes Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the physician at the baths, who sights a great white in the form of contamination from the tanneries upstream. “All that filth,” he tells a couple of hometown newsmen, “seeps into the feed-pipes of the pump-room [at the baths]; and not only that, but this same poisonous offal seeps out onto the beach as well.”
Which is to say that where Ibsen’s doctor is a holy fool, willing to pull down the whole temple for the sake of an idea, Neveu’s is just a fool: a man, culpable in his arrogance and self-righteousness, who’s finally gotten something right but has no idea how to turn it into action. Enemy ends with an incessantly didactic but happy Stockmann ensconced in the approving bosom of his family, claiming to be one of the strongest men in the world because “the strongest man . . . is the man who stands alone.” Traitor, well, doesn’t.
Through 2/25: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 312-943-8722, aredorchidtheatre.org, $30-$35.
