The first half of Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation/updating of An Enemy Of The People is pretty much business as usual. Interesting business! But as usual nonetheless. Matt Smith (or, y’know, his character) discovers the water source in a spa town is contaminated. He wants to take it to the press and his brother the mayor, but is met with - to him, baffling - delay and tamping down. It’s a dissection of how what on the surface might appear to be an obvious good deed might not be, or might be thwarted, the triumph of pragmatism not idealism, and when is compromise a step too far.
The second half, then, broadly takes the form of Smith’s character delivering a blistering monologue ostensibly at a town hall, decrying how society is sick and how we care too much about who Taylor Swift is dating and how the system is designed to keep us down etc. etc. He’s good at this, Smith is - wonder where he got the practice at righteous monologuing…
Then, though, we really kick off. The audience are, directly, with the house lights up, asked to put their hands up if they agree. And then to justify why. Minus something of a coda scene to wrap up the plot, this is it for the rest of the night. It’s… it’s certainly disruptive. It’s fun to watch, but lord is it facile.
I am one of the few in the audience to not put their hand up. It’s too close to both-sides-ism, this idea that they’re all as bad as each other. They’re not, and I’m bored of this Tumblr level discourse by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
At one point in the first act, Smith’s character witheringly dismisses an overly earnest rallying cry with the succinct “you sound like an undergraduate”, which to me perfectly encapsulate the point. The real question, though, is whether Ostermeier believes all this or not. The fact that he refuses to make it clear, despite admittedly some tension on my part about that, is the thing that makes this production truly compelling.