Is there a doctor in the house?
Ibsen’s Nordic noir needs some intensive care
An Enemy Of The People (Nottingham Playhouse) Verdict: Alex Kingston underused The King Of Hell’s Palace (Hampstead Theatre, London) Verdict: Shocking story, rambling plot
ONe GReAT advantage of basing a play on a classic is you get a head start. Another is you can pull in great actors like Alex Kingston — as Nottingham Playhouse has done for Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new version of Henrik Ibsen’s 19th-century protest drama re-set in modern Norway.
All therefore seems set fair, with blue jeans and IKeA furniture added to Ibsen’s North Atlantic perma-drizzle.
It starts off feeling good and familiar, too, with Kingston as a doctor in a spa town where her obedient house-husband (Deka Walmsley) and children appear to be well trained.
She, moreover, is confident that her discovery of pollution in the town’s popular spa waters will be dealt with, so she can continue her cosy, middle-class dream life of bracing walks, mojito cocktails and hash pipes.
Unfortunately, her brother has other ideas. Played by Malcolm Sinclair, he is the town mayor and a dry old stick, with the niggardly manner of a vengeful chartered accountant. HeSeeS that the tourist trade will not be well served by the scandal of her discovery, and arranges for the support she enjoys from the local paper and a popular shop steward to turn against her.
After the interval it’s as though Lenkiewicz loses interest . . . and with it, the plot. Kingston’s reasonable doctor becomes a rambling supremacist, furious with locals who fail to salute her selfless integrity.
The people evolve into a swivel-eyed lynch mob as the wheels come off an already sketchy and polemical play. Some of this may sound painfully reminiscent of our own woes with Remainers and Brexiteers — and lo and behold, that’s the idea!
Oaths fly in all directions, as if Fiona Bruce had lost control of Question Time. And in a desperate bid to rescue a message, director Adam Penford has Kingston stand alone at the end playing the trump card of her victimhood as she proclaims: ‘The strongest woman, she’s always alone.’
Kingston is a terrific talent, and is not well employed spouting such saccharine sentiment. The consequence is that Sinclair’s villainous brother becomes the play’s best character, and even wins pantomime boos at the end — which he takes with a grin.
Not really what Ibsen intended and nor, I suspect, Ms Lenkiewicz.
THE King Of Hell’s Palace is also a quasi- version of Ibsen’s conspiracy drama — only this time, it’s a blood supply contaminated with HIV in rural China of the 1990s.
Based on the testimony of exiled whistleblower Dr Shuping Wang, it’s a fascinating insight into Chinese society. THIS
could make a terrific thriller, but writer Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is torn between the chavvy excesses of Chinese peasants selling their blood, the self- serving ambition of officials lining their pockets and the lofty conscience of another doctor disappointed by everyone’s attitude.
The upshot is a rambling account of the Aids epidemic that ravaged China’s Zhoukou region of Henan.
Ya-Chu Cowhig commits the cardinal sin of letting the truth get in the way of a good story, getting bogged down in explanatory dialogue, cardboard characters and a meandering plot.
Nor does Tom Piper’s design bring clarity, with the multi-location action set in a brick farmyard inexplicably served by a two-lane conveyor-belt reaching into the audience.
Directed by former RSC boss Michael Boyd, the show boasts just one complex character: Celeste Den as the doctor torn between her family and her conscience.
More excitement is created by Millicent Wong as the sensationally amoral peasant who goes from unqualified nurse, to unscrupulous businesswoman and cut-throat politician.
Now there’s a story worth telling.