Theatre
Why Norway got it right?
Kenneth Hurren
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen; English version by John Patrick Vincent (Chichester) Travesties by Tom Stoppard; Royal Shakespeare Co (Aldwych) Echoes from a Concrete Canyon by Wilson John Haire (Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court) Chocolate Cake by Nicholas Wood (Kings Head Theatre Club)
The majority is never right. That is one of those social lies against which an independent, intelligent man must wage war . . . the majority has might on its side — unfortunately — but right it has not.
This rather dispiriting generalisation, which will not be regarded as endearing by the majority and can bring but cold discomfort to the minority, might just conceivably, by the weekend, look like a special text for this week. As it happens it was written ninety-three years ago by the great Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen (whose own people seem, if I am not getting too carried away by a keenness for topicality, to have improved somewhat in the interim), and put into the mouth of the central figure of his play, An Enemy of the People, Dr Thomas Stockmann. To the extent that it is true, it is, of course, no more than the well-known price we pay for democracy in our imperfect world. It is also the despair of all but the supernaturally patient who, from long and melancholy experience, know the ways of the majority and are resigned to waiting until they — having declared, as is their wont when confronted with an issue of principle, for what they believe to be their own self-interest — discover that they have been wrong. Neither Ibsen nor his spokesman, Stockmann, will be ranked up there with Job in the patience game. The dramatist himself, doubtless justifiably, was tetchy about the way some of his plays were received. More relevantly in this context — although it is clear that the creator is with his creation all the way — Stockmann is equally so about the reception of his report on the bacteriological pollution in the supposedly health-giving waters of the small town where he is adviser to the civic authorities.
The general view is that the report has to be suppressed. New municipal baths have just been built, representing a big financial interest to be protected, and the mayor is up to his neck in the deal. Stockmann, who begins the play with a touching faith that the truth, once stated, will instantly prevail, is touchingly aghast. Betrayed on the right, he turns to the left-wing editor of the local newspaper, but radicalism, too, crumples miserably under political pressure. (No one can fault Ibsen on the score of impartiality in handing out the stick.) Never mind, Stockmann will take his crusade to the people. Displaying a naiVet6 verging upon the spectacular, he somehow believes that they will pass him a vote of thanks for pointing out that their dream of prosperity as the most popular spa in the district is not going to come to anything — at least, not unless they are prepared to pay some crippling additional taxes to meet the cost of some sort of purification system. The poor devil hasn't a hope. At his public meeting, they will have none of him, cutting up rough all over the hall (a scene stirringly, if somewhat intimidatingly, stage-managed in Patrick Garland's production at Chichester, with the Norwegian townsfolk 'planted' in the auditorium).
Thus it is that the good doctor, the democratic burden suddenly too great to bear, comes to his fervent denunciation of the 'majority', throwing in for good measure his testy opinion that the whole fabric of their society is as contaminated, as their spa. For some reason, Ibsen made nothing of the fact that Stockmann will obviously be seen to be right eventually, when the bathers start keeling over with horrible fevers (the play really does seem remarkably apposite this week), presumably on the grounds that this is not a consideration that affects the validity of his own theme or the righteousness of the doctor's indignation.
It does rather damage the dramatic effectiveness of the play in its later stages, though, which is a sad fault in a work that, thematically, is standing up depressingly well to the ravages of time. Ghosts may have been in somedegree invalidated by penicillin, and A Doll's House by liberated women, but as long as there are glib and corrupt politicians leading docile and compliant masses, there will be no deed to do much updating on An Enemy of the People. Ibsen is said to have written it in angry haste, and I could wish he had taken time to make it tidier — not counting the crowd scenes, there are too many characters — and to think right through the implications of his endorsement of some sort of elitism. Even so, it has a story that holds the attention, and in the present production, Donald Sinden, playing the uncompromising doctor with benevolent fussiness and volatile exuberance, mines an astonishing amount or humour from what has often seemed a dauntingly earnest role. I was less happy about the comical touches in Bill Fraser's performance as his father-in-law, a sly old capitalist; but Barbara Jefford makes something of the rather dim role of Mrs Stockmann, and Donald Houston has all the smooth-talking menace of the mayor just right. The doctor, by the way, is the mayor's brother, suggesting that Ibsen may have been planning a sideswipe at nepotism in local government as well.
In London, a second look at Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which has returned to the Aldwych with a substantially new cast (though still with the magnificently stylish John Wood at the centre of things), takes me beyond the confirmation of my joyous first impression (The Spectator, June 22, 1974) and leaves me bereft of the temerity of criticism. That surprising digression to incorporate a chunk of Leninist philosophy is a matter the significance of which continues to elude me, but I have no longer the impudent certainty to question its purpose. Instead I am driven to wonder how the play came to take second place even to the splendid Norman Conquests when last year's awards were being handed out. Ayckbourri has ingenuity and is fun; Stoppard is fun and has genius. He is, if I may burn a boat or two, the best there is.
Nothing much doing on the outskirts. Judy Parfitt squeezes some pathos from a glum monologue (with interruptive flashbacks) by a girl implausibly beaten down by her tenement environment in a relentlessly morose item by Wilson John Haire. The one by Nicholas Wood is aimless facetiousness about a tedious sextet isolated by a car breakdown, with nothing to eat but a chocolate cake (gruesomely symbolic of something or other, I'm sure): the gloom here is inadvertent rather than wilful, and therefore worse.
Previous page
