Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy performs open surgery on Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 classic, staging a dynamic sequel that is updated and relocated from late 19th century Norway to modern day Brazil. We pick up where Ibsen left off, as Dr Thomas Stockmann, a whistleblower of local corporate malfeasance faces a reified court of public opinion: 11 audience members summoned on stage for jury duty (with no presiding judge). This single majority will determine whether he is, indeed, an enemy of the people. Performed in Portuguese and English, with English subtitles, Stockmann (Academy Award nominee Wagner Moura) charges the town’s suits (including his own Mayor brother), with prioritising profit over public health; having knowingly allowed a toxic chemical compound to contaminate the water pipelines of the town’s spa resort.
Moura is prismatic as he glides between the role of the defendant, and himself, giving third person character exposition and sincere overtures to the audience. He is both a vigorous and tender presence: Stockmann is repulsed by the venal myopia of the powers that be, with his incredulity and rage at their conspiracy taking the form of impassioned, spit-heavy invective; but he is equally defeated; quietly lamenting how his exile has been the breakdown of his family (here, Moura makes a case for a compelling one-man show).
The production is at once immersive and at a remove. Though frequent fourth wall breaks develop a playful intimacy (casual appeals to the precedents set in Erin Brockovich, Jaws, and Rocky do endear), when combined with the verisimilitude of the trial’s practicalities, we feel the impact of such fragmentation: too much deconstruction has diluted the material’s urgency. Most distracting, however, is the watery argument of the prosecution – the play’s central thrust – being conquered within minutes. The moral conviction of their scant attack is hard to sustain, and we feel the bloat of its over indexing come hour two.
The play does not prescriptively itemise all of today’s analogous, concurrent crises that threaten truth (the proliferation of super-polluter AI Data Centres, and the Draconian proscription of Palestine Action should naturally come to mind), instead, it ruminates on a broad moribund condition: the wholesale referendum on reality we contend with; a one-two punch that first erodes justice, then our very souls.
A Trial – after An Enemy of the People, The Lyceum, run ended