An Enemy of the People (NHB Modern Plays)

When Dr Stockmann makes a disturbing discovery about the healing waters in his local baths, he holds the future of the whole town in his hands. But doubt spreads faster than disease, and those with everything to lose refuse to accept his word. Soon, a battle is raging - and it goes far beyond contaminated water... Ibsen's provocative play about truth in a society driven by power and money is given a startling contemporary spin in Thomas Ostermeier and Florian Borchmeyer's acclaimed version, which premiered at the Avignon Festival followed by the Schaubühne in Berlin in 2012. It has since toured to more than thirty cities around the world. This edition of An Enemy of the People was published alongside the first English-language production, in a version by Duncan Macmillan. It opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 2024, starring Matt Smith and Jessica Brown Findlay. Thomas Ostermeier is a German theatre director, acclaimed for his innovative and often iconoclastic productions of classic and contemporary plays. He is the Artistic Director of the Schaubühne. 'Thrilling... Ibsen's drama scales new heights of excitement and fascination' - Guardian 'Ostermeier is the most important theater director of his generation' - New Republic 'Electrifying... an impassioned examination of society and the powerlessness of democracy to check an abuse of power... Ostermeier is using theatre as a political rallying place, somewhere to ask what we really think' - WhatsOnStage 'Surreal, provocative and very funny... deliciously spikey... fascinating and bracingly direct... Ostermeier blows the themes of the play up in the most thrilling way' - Time Out 'Blistering... full of contemporary resonances' - Financial Times

Auteur

Born in Norway in 1828, Ibsen began his writing career with romantic history plays influenced by Shakespeare and Schiller. In 1851 he was appointed writer-in-residence at the newly established Norwegian Theatre in Bergen with a contract to write a play a year for five years, following which he was made Artistic Director of the Norwegian Theatre in what is now Oslo. In the 1860s he moved abroad to concentrate wholly on writing. He began with two mighty verse dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt, and in the 1870s and 1880s wrote the sequence of realistic 'problem' plays for which he is best known, among them A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm. His last four plays, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken, dating from his return to Norway in the 1890s, are increasingly overlaid with symbolism. Illness forced him to retire in 1900, and he died in 1906 after a series of crippling strokes.