This play is probably most well known in an adaptation by Arthur Miller. Just as a beginning note, the version I read and review below is not that version, but rather a translation from the mid-1960s by Michael Meyer.
In this play, a doctor becomes a figure of hatred when he discovers that the local spring water, which is a large source of income to his town, is dangerously polluted. Nobody else in the town, except for the muck-raking radical newspaper, wants this information out there, of course. So, quickly, the once beloved doctor is labelled an enemy of the people simply because he wants to tell the truth. This being Ibsen, things aren’t as simple as they would be in a lot of versions of this story. The main character of the doctor is very unlikable, for instance; he’s morally in the right, but like a lot of people when they’re morally in the right, he’s very self-righteous and obstinate, hurting his cause with his unnecessary abrasiveness. The progressive newsmen, meanwhile, have strong ideals about the truth being published, but of course it needs to be published in the most sensational way possible and the conflict between the doctor and the townsfolk needs to be escalated at every opportunity and, ultimately, their ideals kind of evaporate. It is, like a lot of Ibsen, a challenging play because it is both a moral screed of a kind, but it also resists easy or lazy shortcuts to get there; it also isn’t interested in the least in making its characters likable. Those are the reasons I’m a fan of Ibsen. This one also has the difficulty of calling for a large cast of characters plus a large cast of extras for the big mob scenes; reading the town meeting scene was a bit difficult because of how chaotic it is, but it’s exactly that energy that would make that scene electrifying and overwhelming in live theater. Boy, I’d love to perform in this one; I’ve been in A Doll’s House as Torvald and it was one of my most satisfying creative experiences to get to work with a character that complex. I don’t know that this play has characters quite on the level of A Doll’s House or if it’s as artful and pointed in its social commentary, but Ibsen was just very gifted at exploring issues through playwriting and, as with most of his other plays, An Enemy of the People is based around issues that haven’t changed very much really over the decades, so this one retains its power to provoke thought and emotion. 4 stars.
tl;dr – issue & morality based play retains the power to provoke thought and emotion in its audience; Ibsen complicates issues and characters in a sophisticated, challenging way. 4 stars.