By SHARON EBERSON
More than a century before “whistleblower” became synonymous with speaking truth to power, there was Dr. Thomas Stockmann.
In An Enemy of the People, the theatrical “father of realism,” Henrik Ibsen, created a web of political, moral and familial dynamics, and a fictional character, rooted in science, who faces down an oligarchic system in small-town Norway.
If the plot has a familiar ring to it, there’s a reason the play has been dissected, retranslated and revived over and over, for more than 140 years.
Pittsburgh Public Theater has taken on Amy Herzog’s 2024 Tony-nominated adaptation of Ibsen’s dark satire with gusto, surrounding a formidable MJ Sieber, making his local debut as the good doctor, with an equally stellar cast.
In this latest adaptation among many, including the Arthur Miller classic, the language is made contemporary in places, and a character – Stockmann’s wife – is now deceased, leaving it to Thomas’ daughter, Petra, to carry the flame for strong women. Zanny Laird is both fierce and heartbreaking as Petra, supporting her father as he embarks on a journey that sweeps him from potential hero to vilified zealot in a flash.
Thomas, a previously poor rural doctor, has returned to his hometown. An upswing in fortune there is due in no small part to the lure of bath springs and the doctor’s endorsement of their health benefits.
Depressed for a long time after the loss of his wife, Thomas has regained his confidence and happily settled in with his daughter and son. Gregarious and hospitable, he opens his home to ostensibly progressive, anti-establishment thinkers, often sharing the doctor’s essays in the local liberal newspaper.
Thomas also is a dedicated scientist, who has been conducting tests on the water. In short order, his worst fears are confirmed: The baths have been contaminated by potentially killer bacteria, with cases of typhus already reported among the visitors.
Thomas and Petra see no ambiguity about what must be done — reveal his findings and shut down the baths. In fact, the good doctor’s newspaper pals – editor Holvsted (Brett Mack), his assistant Billing (Evan Vines), and printer Aslacksen (Garbie Dukes) — hail Thomas as a life-saving hero, and agree to run his report on the contamination in full.
But not so fast.
Thomas’ pompous brother Peter (Scott Giguere), the town’s mayor and chairman of the Baths Committee, demands the report be stifled. There are considerations besides the “alleged” health risks.
For one, the town is certain to face economic ruin if the baths must be shut down and the intake pipes replaced. The investors and city council might also have to admit that they ignored Thomas’ advice to raise the pipes and avoid the industrial waste that is the cause of the contamination.
One of the suspected sources is the tannery run by Thomas’ father-in-law, played by Martin Giles as a deliciously ornery penny-pincher, who does not hide his disrespect for the widower.
As Thomas determines he must reveal what he has learned, one by one, supporters who previously were itching to show up the town’s wealthy council members drop away.
There is no hypocrisy in Giguere’s Peter, who has never shied from his disdain for Thomas’ outgoing ways. He is an immediate skeptic — shades of anti-vaxxers and the shade thrown at Dr. Anthony Fauci by non-scientists — and vows to discredit Thomas’ findings.
It is an inevitability that the brothers, Giguere’s cooly rendered Peter and Sieber’s hot-headed Thomas, will clash. Yet every time you think the people opposing the doctor can sink no further, they go lower.
Garbie Dukes and Scott Giguere, in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s
An Enemy of the People. (Image: Maranie R. Staab)
As Thomas, Sieber evolves from amazement to despair to rage against the money machine that would have him hide the deadly health risks and destroy his reputation.
“You can fire, me you can shun me, but you can’t stop me from telling the truth,” Thomas cries defiantly.
Unable to speak at any official function, Thomas calls a meeting of his own, to read his report, and let his neighbors decide for themselves whom to believe. Here, too, he is thwarted by his brother, with his previous partners now in solidarity now firmly against him.
Outrage and violence ensue, Thomas’ comfortable world crumbles.
Sieber is a wonder, losing control, reigning it in, and letting loose again. And who can blame him? With Petra and their lone friend, the steadfast Captain Horster (Sam Lothard), at his side, Thomas must decide if they will take the high road, and risk losing everything.
Disturbing among the turncoats is Mack’s “journalist,” who declares himself a revolutionary, only to be persuaded by the threat of economic ruin. Mack manifests the shameful changes in his character, while Dukes’ Aslacksen has no such social conscience, following the winds of power and money, wherever it may take him.
The scenic design by Chelsea M. Warren reflects man vs. nature, Nordic minimalism meets the water’s edge. Two angled basins filled with water, one with a working, golden faucet, flank the thrust stage, while the four corners serve as nooks for the actors, who are always in play, living their lives, before they meet in the middle and bump heads.
Directed by Marya Sea Kaminski, returning to the Public for the first time since leaving as artistic director, Thomas’ desperate pleas to be heard build to a harrowing scene of betrayal and violence.
Ibsen was said to have written An Enemy of the People in response to the backlash he received from another play, Ghosts, that included shocking topics for the time, and take-downs of conventional morality.
Herzog’s deft adaptation could be ripped from the headlines, about climate-change deniers and anti-science sentiment, about the “one percent” who seemingly hold dominion over all, about media capitulating to threats of retribution, and about the Minnesotans risking their lives to protest the injustices of ICE in their midst.
In the production now at the Public’s O’Reilly Theater, superbly acted and mounted with resolute conviction, sounding the alarm has rarely seemed so noble, so terrifyingly plausible, and so of the moment we live in.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Public Theater’s production of An Enemy of the People is at the O’Reilly Theater, Downtown, through February 22, 2026. Tickets: Visit https://www.ppt.org/production/100483/an-enemy-of-the-people or call 412-316-1600.
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