The Arts Fuse Newsletter, March 20
From The Editor's Desk:
Proof that we shouldn’t let sleeping giants lie. Ironically, An Enemy of the People has been condescended to as the runt among Henrik Ibsen’s masterpieces, dismissed by critics as a didactic potboiler penned by the dramatist to deal with his anger over the public hoo-ha that greeted Ghosts’ attack on moral hypocrisy. Does anyone doubt that the climate crisis propelled the successful Broadway production of the 1882 script? Thomas Stockmann — fighting to assert scientific fact against an army of self-interested deniers — has come into his own. The protagonist is a truth-teller (the issue is water pollution, and there are lives at stake) and he is besieged from every ideological side to stay silent: by politicos, businessmen, journalists, spreaders of disinformation (19th century version), and the solid majority. Ibsen, who admired rebels, would not have had a problem with Extinction Rebellion’s recent disruption of a performance of Enemy (during the town hall scene!) at NYC’s Circle in the Square Theatre. Theatergoers deserve a taste of reality: the prognosis for the earth’s health — and society’s will to protect it — has darkened considerably in nearly a century and a half.
Unsurprisingly, productions of Enemy have been springing up around the globe, though not in New England. In 2017 I reviewed a very fine staging at Yale Rep. Barrington Stage Company’s 2014 production of Arthur Miller’s 1950 version of Enemy only underlined Ibsen’s theatrical genius. Miller idealizes Stockmann, painting him as an angelic victim of proto-McCarthyism. Ibsen’s surly anti-hero preaches an ersatz brand of Nietzschean elitism: the noble few should lead; the powerful should be discarded and the rabble castigated. Stockmann is a comic turn on a trait that will turn tragic (or tragicomic) in the Ibsen plays to follow: the megalomania that comes when you think you have the power of the truth (or nobility) on your side.
When it comes to their programming, Boston’s theaters follow where New York leads. Perhaps we will see a production of Enemy here? Be still my beating heart. My advice is not to stage the original, or the Miller adaptation, but to take a hint from Scottish playwright Kieran Hurley’s provocative 2021 update, The Enemy. Here Stockmann is a woman, and we are in a high tech world of cell phones and character assassination via social media. As for Ibsen’s expose of corruption, opportunistic cowardice, capitalistic self-destruction, self-deluded demagoguery, and rampant environmental degradation, no updating is necessary.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Theater Review: Touring “Girl From the North Country” – A Slow, Serious Musical set to the Bob Dylan Catalog
By Bob Abelman
Bob Dylan’s music has rarely been more heartbreaking, his poetic storytelling rarely more beguiling, and the singing never less nasal.
Traveling Exhibit Review: “Auschwitz — Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”
By Bob Israel
Filled with graphic images of life before, during, and after the Holocaust, the show is compelling, but its message comes off as hermetically sealed because it doesn't draw crucial connections with what is going on now.
Book Review: “The Road from Belhaven” — How Hope and Resilience Can Prevail
By Roberta Silman
Margot Livesey has given us an exhilarating historical novel filled with fascinating details of a different time in an isolated part of the world, all rendered in gorgeous prose.
Jazz Album Review: Tenor Saxophonist George Coleman is in Command on One For All’s “Big George”
By Michael Ullman
“One For All, featuring George Coleman: Big George” from Smoke Sessions Records is polished, tonally elegant, and beautifully recorded.
Book Review: “Galway Confidential” — Amidst the Castaways
By Lucas Spiro
The 17th installment in one of Irish crime fiction’s bleakest series by one of the genre’s most prolific writers, Ken Bruen.
Book Review: “Shakespeare and Baseball” — Make “Speed to Catch the Tiger”
By Bill Littlefield
Professor Samuel Crowl’s attachments to both Shakespeare’s plays and the play of the Detroit Tigers are sincere and durable.
Concert Review: “Fort Nights” — A Celebration of Life and Community
By Paul Robicheau
Saturday night’s advertised performers paid robust homage to the late Gary Smith — the Fort Apache Studios owner, producer, and band manager — across three and a half hours at the Somerville Theatre.
Help Keep The Arts Fuse Lit!
Precious few independent online arts publications make it to double digits. Please give us the resources the magazine needs to persevere at an essential cultural task.
Keep the Fuse lit and support our 70+ writers by making a donation.
The Arts Fuse also needs underwriting for the magazine to continue to grow.
And…tell your friends about the in-depth arts coverage you can’t get anywhere else.
Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
Hi Bill--remember the Clamshell Alliance? The last time I tried out for a professional show was an "anti-nuclear troupe" production of "Enemy of the People. The audition process lasted two weeks. Then we were called in for rehearsals but still weren't assigned parts, except for Stockmann, who was being played by an actor who seemed better suited to Sheridan Whiteside. The rehearsal consisted of trying to read through while he suggested changes to the script, which were all accepted. When he got "whited sepulcher" approved, I insisted that the director tell me which part I'd have. He responded, "It's not that kind of production." I headed for the door. It was Geronimo Sands doing Ibsen...