Activists Disrupt Play on Broadway - Mayhem Supposedly Ensues

An Enemy of the People portrays one man's struggle to spread the truth about deadly pollution. Last night on Broadway, in a chaotic example of life imitating art, real-life climate activists literally stopped the show: Three protesters, one by one, stood up and interrupted the play with speeches of their own, leaving the actors and the audience rattled.

I was there, and I was stunned. Truth be told, I didn't know what to believe. It was, if nothing else, a tremendous moment of theater.

I later talked at some length with one of the protesters, Nate Smith. I'll get to that part soon—but first, some background. Henrik Ibsen's 1882 social drama An Enemy of the People centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers that the spa water in his small resort town is teeming with potentially fatal bacteria. Since the local economy depends on spa tourism, no one wants to believe him. The play's Broadway revival, adapted by Amy Herzog and directed by Sam Gold, stars Succession's Jeremy Strong as Stockmann and The Sopranos's Michael Imperioli as his bother, the town's mayor. The production is a hit: It grossed more than $1 million last week, and has been selling out the small Circle in the Square Theatre. 

Last night was a press performance, so a lot of critics—including me—were in attendance. The production doesn't open until Monday, so I won't review it here. All you need to know is that, coming out of a brief intermission, the play depicts a public forum at which Stockmann attempts to tell his fellow citizens what's going on, and they turn on him violently. The entire play is staged in the round, and in this scene Gold's staging consciously includes the audience. Multiple spectators are brought onstage to pad out the action; the house lights are kept on, and the actors address the crowd as though we were townsfolk at the meeting.