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In the movie Jaws, the police chief wants to close the beaches because a great white shark's been spotted cruising local waters. The city council raises a ruckus: who cares about lost limbs or lives; what about the tourist trade?
Peter Benchley "borrowed" this conflict from Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1882), where Dr. Thomas Stockman discovers that water flowing into his town's baths is poisoned. When Stockman crusades to close the baths, resentment among townsfolk spreads like a virus. Stockman, his family, and even his few friends, become vilified.
Ibsen made Stockman more than just a blazing idealist. By the end, Stockman abandons his project and becomes a zealot, eager to cleanse a poisoned society. He shouts "the party leaders must be exterminated."
The play concludes with Stockman claiming that "the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
In 1950, Arthur Miller adapted Ibsen's drama. He cut the five acts to two and, in effect, speed-read the original. Stockman becomes an uncomplicated hero and just about everyone else outside his family's a body-snatching reactionary.
Miller had his reasons: he turned the play into an indictment of McCarthyism and of those in the "majority" who didn't dare object.
Intrepid Shakespeare Company uses Miller's script (and Jack O'Brien's resetting of the play at Riverton, Maine, in 1954). The characters, and some of the acting, are thin. And the truncated scenes play more like melodrama than Ibsen's detailed portrayal of social corruption.
Within these limitations, Matt Scott's Stockman is a full-bodied, fully-felt performance. He begins giddy - almost assurred of sainthood - then spirals down again and again. In Miller's nicely ambiguous ending, Stockman may, or may not, rise.
Scott's best work comes when Stockman lecture's the mob. As of wearing a brace of bull's-eyes, the doctor dares to assert the truth. Scott makes the visceral remarks a triumph, in that the doctor almost loses his mind.
Although he has some strong moments as Stockman's brother, Eric Poppick's slick deliveries could pick up and thicken a bit. Versatile Brian Mackey makes Hovstad, the editor, the epitome of a fair weather, weak-kneed do-gooder.
Danny Campbell, Sean Cox, Brenda Dodge, and Antonio (TJ) Johnson provide support.
The uncredited set (in San Diego Academy's impressive new Clayton E. Liggett Theatre) is functional, though the music - hyper, early 50s rock and roll - doesn't fit the play at all (popular songs from Your Hit Parade could have provided ironic twists).
Miller's play's a skeletal version of the original. But his point about tacit acceptance of corruption rings true. Ralph Chaplin, poet of the Industrial Workers of the World, summed it up. Protestors shouldn't mourn "the dead in the cool earth," he wrote, or "your captive comrades" in prison. "But rather mourn the apathetic throng/The cowed and the meek/Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong/And dare not speak."
Clayton E. Liggett Theatre, San Diego Academy, 800 Santa Fe Drive, Encinitas. Playing through February 19; Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. Matinee Saturday at 3:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. 760-652-5011.
In the movie Jaws, the police chief wants to close the beaches because a great white shark's been spotted cruising local waters. The city council raises a ruckus: who cares about lost limbs or lives; what about the tourist trade?
Peter Benchley "borrowed" this conflict from Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1882), where Dr. Thomas Stockman discovers that water flowing into his town's baths is poisoned. When Stockman crusades to close the baths, resentment among townsfolk spreads like a virus. Stockman, his family, and even his few friends, become vilified.
Ibsen made Stockman more than just a blazing idealist. By the end, Stockman abandons his project and becomes a zealot, eager to cleanse a poisoned society. He shouts "the party leaders must be exterminated."
The play concludes with Stockman claiming that "the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
In 1950, Arthur Miller adapted Ibsen's drama. He cut the five acts to two and, in effect, speed-read the original. Stockman becomes an uncomplicated hero and just about everyone else outside his family's a body-snatching reactionary.
Miller had his reasons: he turned the play into an indictment of McCarthyism and of those in the "majority" who didn't dare object.
Intrepid Shakespeare Company uses Miller's script (and Jack O'Brien's resetting of the play at Riverton, Maine, in 1954). The characters, and some of the acting, are thin. And the truncated scenes play more like melodrama than Ibsen's detailed portrayal of social corruption.
Within these limitations, Matt Scott's Stockman is a full-bodied, fully-felt performance. He begins giddy - almost assurred of sainthood - then spirals down again and again. In Miller's nicely ambiguous ending, Stockman may, or may not, rise.
Scott's best work comes when Stockman lecture's the mob. As of wearing a brace of bull's-eyes, the doctor dares to assert the truth. Scott makes the visceral remarks a triumph, in that the doctor almost loses his mind.
Although he has some strong moments as Stockman's brother, Eric Poppick's slick deliveries could pick up and thicken a bit. Versatile Brian Mackey makes Hovstad, the editor, the epitome of a fair weather, weak-kneed do-gooder.
Danny Campbell, Sean Cox, Brenda Dodge, and Antonio (TJ) Johnson provide support.
The uncredited set (in San Diego Academy's impressive new Clayton E. Liggett Theatre) is functional, though the music - hyper, early 50s rock and roll - doesn't fit the play at all (popular songs from Your Hit Parade could have provided ironic twists).
Miller's play's a skeletal version of the original. But his point about tacit acceptance of corruption rings true. Ralph Chaplin, poet of the Industrial Workers of the World, summed it up. Protestors shouldn't mourn "the dead in the cool earth," he wrote, or "your captive comrades" in prison. "But rather mourn the apathetic throng/The cowed and the meek/Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong/And dare not speak."
Clayton E. Liggett Theatre, San Diego Academy, 800 Santa Fe Drive, Encinitas. Playing through February 19; Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. Matinee Saturday at 3:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. 760-652-5011.