Text taken from Contributors.ro / author: Mircea Morariu

In 2014, when in the offer of performances of an edition of the International Theatre Festival Interferences, organized by the Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj-Napoca and its director, Tompa Gábor, the show with the play appeared An enemy of the people by Henrik Ibsen, the name of German director Thomas Ostermeier was not at all unknown to the Romanian public.

Something was also known about Nora, and about HamletThe latter came to us on the occasion of an edition of the Festival Shakespeare  created by Emil Boroghină at the National Theatre Marin Sorescu from Craiova. It was also known that Ostermeier was passionate about Ibsen's dramatic literature. Which he staged in its entirety and to which he dedicated substantial pages in his book Theater and fear which would also appear in Romanian in 2016, in the collection Yorick  of Bucharest publishing houses NemiraThe 2024 reissue of the book would be complemented by the appearance of two other books dedicated to the director from Schaubühne, one that also appeared at Nemira  (Thomas Ostermeier's Theater), the other (Backstage Ostermeier) at the Cultural Foundation Camil PetrescuAlso in 2024, Ostermeier staged on the stage of the National Theatre IL Caragiale the play show Hedda Gabler.

But let's go back to 2014 and the show with An enemy of the people from Schaubühmm."It's a very banal, very simple play, with stereotypical characters," Ostermeier told Ionuț Sociu, in an interview for the supplement.Weekend Truth on Friday, December 5, 2014. But both in An enemy of the people as well as in other plays by Ibsen, from bride TO The pillars of society, for example, there is a lot of talk about money, and money is always a topical issue. As a possible chance for a show with An enemy of the people to be saved from banality. “I am interested in evoking the fact that today's society feeds on the so-called ideals of bourgeois society at the end of the 19th century. Values such as family, prosperity, happiness, are brought to light today without being investigated, after they had suffered a fracture in the 1960s. It is absolutely scandalous, I think, that people relate to these components of social life so uncritically,” the director told Ralucă Rădulescu in the interview for Radio Romania Cultural which could also be read fragmentarily in the magazine yorick from Monday, December 1, 2014.

“It is essential for me that the texts of the classics be modified,” Ostermeier added there. Why? Because, as the same Thomas Ostermeier said in the interview with Sylvie Chalet, an interview that constitutes the substance of the book Thomas Ostermeier, appeared in 2004 in the series careful  of the “Mihai Eminescu” National Theatre in Timișoara, “the staging begins at the moment when I have an idea of what the connection between our lives today could be.” Or. “What motivates the staging of a new play – says the director regarding the newly published texts – is the power it has to bring before us a world, characters, questions that have not yet found their place on stage.” 

Thomas Ostermeier's great merit is to have made An enemy of the people to seem like a new play. Written today. An extremely contemporary play. And the show I saw ten years ago was a lively, thrilling one, a show where people laugh freely, loudly and without restraint, the ridiculousness of some of the characters or situations being our everyday ridiculousness. 

Ostermeier and the playwright, in the German sense of the term, Florian Borchmeyer, made a few changes to the text. They updated it, brought it into the present day, reduced the number of characters. The family of the balneologist doctor Stockmann is a new contemporary one. A young family, without prejudices, with only one child and that infant. A child that the young doctor and his wife have only just begun to get used to, who sometimes even makes them uncomfortable.

Until a point, that is, right up until near the end when an "indecision" occurs like a knife strike, felt  in full face by all the spectators, an indecision that underlines the idea so contemporary and so familiar to us, living in today's Romania, that everything is negotiable, everything has a price, everything "can be resolved", that nothing is definitive and that the verso can become the reverse at any time, that is, in the most consistent part of the editing, Stockmann was a fanatic of justice. But he was not at all, absolutely not at all, a cold fanatic, without a trace of humanity. He was not what would be called "an idea character". He was not an intangible starch. Not at all. Stockmann, his wife and his friend, Billing, listened to electronic music, they loved rock, they especially loved David Bowie whose song Changes was the musical leitmotif of the show. The three even had a band that was constantly rehearsing and were disturbed in their rehearsals by the Stockmann family's baby. They are  hipster, as they say today. It couldn't be clearer. Doctor Stockmann, like his wife, like the very young and apparently non-conformist Billing, were not at any time in what would be called complementary distribution with the brother – municipal councilor, who became mayor of the city in the rewrite, properly dressed, in a suit and tie, of the doctor. But in contrastive distribution, clearly antithetical. An antithesis waiting for a spark to turn into a scandal. The naturals of the young are opposed to mannerism The “press people”, Hovstad and Asklaksen were transit characters, "those who change" to the point that from being promoters of the article - bomb, anti-pollution, doctor, they end up leading the violent anti-Stockmann demonstration. A key scene in which Christophe Gawenda, the then performer of the role (the show has undergone several changes in the cast over time), was, what I would call, after the model of Jean-Pierre Richard who spoke about the existence of a boiler character in Balzac's novels, a boiler actor. His speech from the podium was fiery, the character seemed like a kind of alter-ego of Gelu Ruscanu. The audience on the evening I saw the show proved to be convinced by Stockmann and his words, they “voted” for him in the majority in the interactive sequence, even if they proved to be a bit more timid when it came to “arguments”. Although references to the “case”, to the “Roșia Montana affair” were not lacking.

I have reviewed the show in great detail. Schaubühne because the one made in 2024 by director Radu Iacoban, in the beautiful and well-thought-out scenography of Tudor Prodan, on the stage of the Theater Queen Mary from Oradea, resembles it very well. We almost have a franchise. Radu Iacoban preferred the text version proposed by Thomas Ostermeier in collaboration with Florian Borchmeyer, resorting, however, bad luck, to its English translation by Duncan MacMillan. He opted, for reasons that escape me, for the title An enemy of the people. The director made two changes regarding the gender of the characters. Mr. Aslaksen became a lady, played with categorical tones by Gabriela Codrea. The father of Dr. Stockmann's wife delegated his evil functions to the mother. Whom Elvira Rîmbu plays like an ultra-colorful Claire Zachanassian, who has come uninvited to visit, detesting her son-in-law, despising him, mocking him whenever she has the opportunity, ultimately putting him in an impossible situation. The production deliberately does not have a clear ending. This is because, like the model, it intends to give homework to the viewer. Thus emphasizing its performance-debate characteristics. 

Doctor Stockmann (well, clearly played by Răzvan Vicoveanu, excellent even at the moment of the speech with small userist accents, even if he does not have a tribune at his disposal that can metamorphose into a refrigerator from which the doctor took a beer, as happened in the German show, is further cast in contrast to his brother, the mayor. Whose manipulative virtues are meticulously revealed by the versatile and intense acting of Richard Balint. To whom the role of Peter Stockmann fits a glove. The meetings between the two, increasingly blunt, represent the point of maximum interest of the show. Alina Leonte plays Katharina without too much trouble, Tudor Manea (Billing) is a successful young villain, to a point even likeable in his versatility, while Alin Stanciu is the villain with a stick. Finally, Lucian Cremeneanu does his job well in the role of Moderator 

There would have been work on the rhythm, which in the performance I saw was not quite as it should have been, there would have been work on the intonations. Especially in the beginning. Maybe Tudor Manea and Alin Stanciu are too merciful when they throw buckets of water and dirt on their colleague, Răzvan Vicoveanu. But, I beg your pardon, there is a reason why there is suggestion in the theater.