By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 10 February, opens 20 February and runs through 6 April 2024

We’re in the 5th row and start to get a little nervous as ushers ask those in the front 3 at the interval whether they’d like to wear disposable waterproofs for the 2nd half as paintballs will be thrown at the stage.

• Read on for reasons including why Smith is absolutely on fire and this is theatre at its most raw, inspiring and real.

We remember a similar ‘splash zone’ for a production of Singing In The Rain and noticed when the paint-pelting did start that those in the very front row appeared to be able to pull a cover from the front of the stage to protect themselves.

We should make clear that although we’re giving this 5* our companion thought it nearer 3* and that there were several ideas too many in the radical staging by director Thomas Ostermeier.

Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy Of The People asks the question: ‘Is it right to expose an unpalatable truth publicly?’

This update opens in the present day with Jessica Brown Findlay (Uncle Vanya, Almeida) and understudy Vilberg Andri Palsson performing a stripped-back cover of Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love.

We’re at the untidy, blackboard-littered home of Brown Findlay’s Katharina Stockmann and she shares it with a young child and her doctor husband Thomas played by former Dr Who Smith (Lungs, Old Vic) who recently led TV’s House Of The Dragon.

The pair plus Palsson’s journalist friend Billing are in a band with local newspaper editor Hovstad played by Shubham Saraf (An Adventure, Bush Theatre) and we hear them in rehearsal play David Bowie’s Changes and Stand By Me by Oasis with Smith’s Dr Stockmann singing.

Our companion felt this was of absolutely no relevence to the plot but the songs appear reflective of what we are about to see and perhaps its intention was to show what magic people who work together can conjure.

Paul Hilton (The Glass Menagerie, Duke Of York’s Theatre) is oily as the doctor’s brother and town mayor and we learn Thomas has discovered the water at the tourist attraction baths at which he works is contaminated and he plans to expose the truth in the local newspaper.

Ostermeier’s An Enemy of the People includes Stockmann’s opponents asking the audience for a show of hands – is he right or wrong, politically speaking? – before inviting them to pose any questions they have.

Smith told The Guardian: ‘What grabbed me about Stockmann is the idea of playing someone who’s on the right side, saying the right thing and fighting for the truth, but who is ultimately like a star turning into a black hole, enveloping himself in his own ego and velocity and opinions. And then, for people to be able to put up their hand and say: I think you’re like this, and the world out there is like that… They’ll actually be able to talk to him.’

It’s excruciating and yet invigorating at this preview to hear the audience’s reaction to what they have seen and we felt for Priyanga Burford’s publisher Aslaksen who had to cope with such unexpected contributions including: ‘can we all have refunds because the tickets were so expensive?’

It seeks to provoke exactly the sort of anger at injustice and call to action for activism that Live Aid global jukebox musical Just For One Day, which opens this week, similarly aims for but fails to do.

The beauty of Ostermeier’s production is that it is nuanced enough to not be as black and white as its numerous chalk boards.

It will not be to everyone’s tastes, the splash zone for example may be a paintball too far but Smith is absolutely on fire and this is theatre at its most visually spectacular, raw, inspiring and real.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy ATG
• Have you seen Matt Smith onstage before and what did you think? Tickets
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