Moral Pollution

By T.E. Kalem

A poor Norwegian town hopes to become prosperous by attracting tourists to a bathing spa. Dr. Stockmann (Stephen Elliott), the spa medical adviser, discovers that the town's waters are polluted. Stockmann assumes that his brother Peter, the mayor (Philip Bosco), will start an immediate cleanup. Peter adamantly refuses. The doctor believes that a liberal publisher (Conrad Bain) and his crusading editor (David Birney) will print the truth. They turn against him. He tries to rally the populace and is reviled as An Enemy of the People. At play's end, the town is morally polluted by the fraud it has elected to live by, and Dr. Stockmann huddles with his family as rocks come pelting through the windows of his home.

When Arthur Miller adapted Ibsen's play in 1950, he was greatly concerned about the abuses of McCarthyism. The wheel of history having turned, present-day audiences will be much more caught up in the ecological aspects of the play. It is ironic that while audiences will root for Stockmann on this contemporary issue, they would probably spurn him as an arrogant elitist if he were running for political office. As unyieldingly committed as was Ibsen himself to the prior claims of the individual conscience, intellect, character and will. Stockmann has no use for "the solid majority." He is for the "isolated, intellectually superior personalities" in society.

Venomous Division. That belief, what might be called the "Coriolanus complex," seems to embarrass Miller. So he tones down or eliminates speeches expressing it in order to spotlight Stockmann as a kind of pioneer spirit of the purely ethical life. As a result, the play becomes something of a tirade against the venality of small-town existence rather than a broad examination of when, or whether, the democratic principle of majority rule may legitimately be abrogated by a single individual. Certainly, in the realm of ideas one would have to agree with Stockmann: "Before many can know something, one must know it." But in the realm of the state, one extremist, even in a righteous cause, may create a psychic disruption, a venomous division between man and man, that can prove as poisonous as any physical pollution.

The present production at Lincoln Center begins slowly but develops cumulative power. Though it is basically a didactic tract, the key players infuse it with crackling personal passion. Stephen Elliott is especially good as Stockmann, and Philip Bosco plays his brother with icy distinction. Sibling rivalry has always been a Miller strong point, and he has the two brothers go at each other like champion boxers. . T.E. Kalem

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