Power play Gamm’s stirring An Enemy of the People BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	An Enemy of the People By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Arthur Miller. Directed by Tony Estrella . With Richard Donelly, Alyn Carlson-Webster, Jeanine Kane, Dan Tracy, Ben Penick, Jim O’Brien, Tom Oakes, Steve Kidd, Karen Carpenter, Ralph Stokes, Sam Babbitt, Sean McConaghy, Heidi McNeil, Bernice Bronson, Andrew Morissette, and Jed Hancock-Brainerd. At Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre through October 3.

Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People may not be the most plausibly argued indictment of the dictatorship of the majority, but you’d hardly know that from Gamm’s electrifying staging. If presidential politicians can sway us by riding emotional arguments for all they’re worth, what chance do we have with this stage full of convincing, stirred-up actors?

By the end of this polemic of a play, a despised man who should be a hero learns that "the strong must learn to be lonely." Witnessing his turmoil, we are urged to remind ourselves of a number of matters, foremost that what we find most urgent to believe is whatever we most strongly want to believe.

Things start out with Dr. Thomas Stockman (Richard Donelly) smug and prosperous in his home, pleased that he and his family can afford to have roast beef twice that day. His dour polar opposite is his brother, Peter (Jim O’Brien), a caricature of self-righteous indignation who subsists largely on weak tea and toast.

Thomas is delighted when a report comes back from the university laboratory, showing that the town’s mineral springs are "a pest hole," full of infectious bacteria leeching down from a tannery waste dump up the mountain. He assumes that he’ll be celebrated for saving the day, since he is the medical director of the new Kristen Springs spa.

Nah. Brother Peter is not only the stiff-backed mayor, he is chairman of the corporation that has developed the baths, which promise to bring prosperity and international appreciation to the town. No way will he put up with public exposure of the situation. Keep that report to yourself, he insists, and work quietly on the problem over time.

Ibsen was aware that such a pompous man is an easy target, so he also takes aim at self-described liberals and radicals. At first the two editors of The People’s Daily Messenger are eager to publish Thomas’s report. Hovstad (Steve Kidd) says that the "smug cabal" of town fathers must be knocked off their perch. His colleague Billing (Karen Carpenter) is also ready to present the findings as a scandal. But when they realize that the economic repercussion will include damaging their livelihood, they about-face. Their publisher, Aslaksen (Sam Babbitt), is also head of the property-owners association, so we know how long his public servant convictions will last.

A public meeting is the center of this drama, though the situation is drained of suspense — by then Ibsen has so stacked the deck against Thomas that we know he won’t be dealt an honest hand. His brother has arranged for no one to rent him a hall to warn the townspeople, so a lecture is to take place in the home of a friend — a strong-minded man who nevertheless lets the meeting be taken over by the town fathers. Thomas is not allowed to present the facts, but he does roll up his sleeves and deliver a resounding speech, an attack on the authority of the majority when the majority is wrong.

Donelly delivers the goods in that scene, riding our good will to moral triumph. (Ibsen’s initial 1883 Oslo audience would have been a challenge, presented with such an anti-establishment screed.) O’Brien has the harder job, playing the wholly unsympathetic brother, but he humanizes him to the extent that we can believe his towering self-regard would blind him to the facts before him.

Under director Tony Estrella’s sure hand, the supporting cast sustains and here and there amplifies the spell we’re under as we watch these lemmings pour off their cliff. Babbitt is the most entertaining, as the nervously doddering publisher so easily intimidated by authority. (I literally slapped my knee when he pulled a bit of impromptu stage business, kicking a piece of debris off the stage when the mayor complained about the untidy newspaper office.) Alyn Carlson-Webster as Thomas’s wary wife and Jeanine Kane as their schoolteacher daughter, who has a ready eye out for hypocrisy, skillfully fill out concerns that the single-minded Stockman doesn’t address. As the wife’s ostensibly senile father, Tom Oakes lets his clownishness slip off like an overcoat but retains a bemused smile when he reveals the man to be the slyest person in town.

Playwright Arthur Miller adapted this play in 1950, furious about Red Scare tactics, before he found an American allegory for the concern, in 1953’s The Crucible. He and the Norwegian progenitor of socially conscious realism in theater both must have smiled at the words of Peter Stockman: "The public doesn’t need new ideas. It’s much better off with old ideas." When neo-con men of any era try foisting that one on a tremulous public, they always find a receptive audience.