You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

An Enemy Of The People : Duke Of York's Theatre

I booked this because I like Matt Smith and thought he'd be good value on stage - I obviously had no idea about the play!  And the stage when I walked in didn't exactly give me any clues.

Well - this is an interesting one and no mistake!  It's an Ibsen play (which premiered in 1883) and it has a surprising amount to say today.  Thomas Stockmann (Matt Smith) is the medical officer in a small town which relies on its spa to survive and he's identified a problem with the water which would basically shut the whole town down - what should he do?  And as the play progresses, information gets out and the situation changes - how does that affect the balance of power? 

So, in theory, this feels very relatable to today with minimal updates and, for the first half at least, they give it minimal updates and it still feels very relatable.  But (and there's nearly always a but) it just never gets going - it all feels very like a (very well done) school play which has decent actors in it but it's all trying a bit too hard and is very clumsy at times (particularly the musical interludes).  And then, the second half happens...

And it's really quite something.  The overall situation is moved to a town-hall scenario where Thomas gives us a ten minute reactionary/socialist rant which isn't totally out of context but it does feel a bit jarring when compared with the tone of what went before.  It then gets opened up to the audience (ie us) to give our opinions on what the town should do - on the evening I was there we were a bit slow in joining in but we got there in the end and there was some amusing ranting, at which point it was clear our time was up and we were shut down!

And then for the last twenty minutes, the play settles down to somewhere in between what we've seen before - it's much more standard in terms of structure but it also manages to come out with an interesting ending which, Wikipedia tells me, is nothing like the original but feels much more relatable and leaves everyone both chuckling and thinking.

If I was the sort to walk out at half-time, then this play feels like a prime example of something I would have ditched - it was fine, but it just wasn't that interesting.  But, the second half, whilst not redeeming it, did at least make things more interesting and I thought it ended well - but I still feel that some more thought should have gone into this.

The acting is perfectly fine, which feels like a bit of an insult - I feel that Matt isn't a "perfectly fine" kinda actor and people would prefer to hate him rather than tolerate him.  Also, he rarely stands out from the crowd, with the exception being his town hall rant which is well acted but just a bit too out of context to feel like a natural fit.  Of the other actors, I'd call out Jessica Brown Findlay as Thomas's wife Katharina and Paul Hilton as his brother Peter but I'd also have to say I didn't feel like either of them really shone.  I'm also going to call out Nigel Lindsay as Thomas's father-in-law, but only because we've seen him before in The Lehmann Trilogy and his dog is very cool and well-behaved, if somewhat unnecessary.

Somewhat bizarrely, one of the things that stood out most for me was the set - it's basically a huge blackboard and various changes in time and space are portrayed very well through the simple use of chalk or whitewash.  It's amusingly messy at times, but effectively so.

All in all, this was fine but for a premium show in a premium theatre it just didn't deliver for me - in a lot of ways a sixth form cast at the local school would have made for a more interesting performance (with a much lower level of expectation).  Which isn't really what you want to feel having dropped up to £201.50 on a seat (spoiler alert - I didn't!) - lordy, in my day that was a LOT of money...

ABBA Voyage - Interesting, but slightly odd
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Very impressive