F or a surly old man in Victorian muttonchops, Henrik Ibsen has turned out to be endlessly adaptable. It seems every generation gets the Ibsen it needs. In the early aughts you couldn’t go a season without watching at least a few Hedda Gablers blow their brains out because of the patriarchy. Now we’ve got a spate of Thomas Stockmanns—courageous, tenacious, not a little nuts—blowing the whistle on small-town oligarchs in productions of An Enemy of the People. Including the astute and entertaining one running now at the Goodman Theatre.
Boy, is he ever dreaming. As brother Peter is the first to point out, a
shutdown will cost the town precious income, not to mention its reputation
as a healing getaway. And a true fix of the sort Thomas advocates will cost
millions (another running gag: the mayor’s higher and higher estimates of
how many millions), requiring a tax hike. Ibsen is great at teasing out the
many strands of self-interest, and conflicts of interest, that insinuate
themselves around everybody involved, Thomas not excepted, wrapping them up
like those creepy pod tendrils in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Through 4/15: Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; also Tue 4/3, 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $10-$97.
