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Isnt it fun to pick a future with limited information?
Doesnt all that individual choice make you feel informed and optimistic?
Now, Henrik Ibsens 1882AnEnemy of the Peopledoes not start with coffee or tea either.
Both Ickes and Ibsens stories start simply.
Its hard to pick just one crisis a modernEnemycould be allegorizing.
Do you think of Flint?
Yes and yes and yes.
The Armory has the kind of interior that scrambles your sense of measurement.
By entering (and unmasking?
), we become the population of Weston Springs, Ickes version of Ibsens corrupt little burg.
(Tal Yarden did the video design.
Its unfortunate, though, that even with these aide-memoire she seems so unsteady.
I am willing to admit that Ibsens original can be a little … chalky.
Ibsens play does have an annoying habit of restating its argument act after act.
These arent translations or even adaptive modernizations the relationship to the original is more distant than that.
The only truly unchanged thing is that recognizable, marketable title.
(Yermawas even at the Armory).
Though the questions audience members vote on can sometimes be ham-fisted (Who is the Enemy of the People?
), it was illuminating to see how our table actually came to our decisions.
We asked, What would Fauci do?
We occasionally tried to torpedo the show from within.
(Ibsen would have loved that: His trademark phrase was Torpedo the ark.)
And over and over again, we demonstrated how democracy produces bad results through unseriousness and dog-in-the-manger-ism and haste.
As a director, Icke did not offer Dowd an environment in which she could comfortably play her role.
But he did a bang-up job of tricking us into playing ours.
Will artists deal with the disease?
Or will they venture to cheer us up?Enemydoes venture to do both.
Its a flawed script, but Icke and his team have still done impressive work in emotional management.
We replicated pretty much every civic and administrative failure of the past year and a half.
But screwing up finally had zero repercussions.
We hit the buttons with increasing giddiness.
No fantasy ever felt so good.
Enemy of the Peopleis at the Park Avenue Armory through August 8.
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