After the great success of Ragazzi di vita by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Massimo Popolizio now takes on a classic text—a searing drama that speaks urgently to the present: Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Both directing and performing, Popolizio explores themes of power, corruption, and ethical responsibility toward the environment. The Norwegian playwright’s work acquires a renewed communicative force from our contemporary perspective: far from being a mere indictment of speculation, it continues to reveal, with ruthless foresight, the risks faced by any democratic society when its leaders are corrupt and the majority submits to authority in order to safeguard personal interest.
At the heart of the drama lies a political and moral conflict between two brothers: the doctor who discovers the pollution of the town’s thermal waters, and the mayor—his brother—who seeks to cover it up, arguing that the denunciation would destroy collective dreams of prosperity. “What should be done? Close the baths until they are purified—with the consequent economic damage—or continue to promote them, ensuring the city’s development?” Two visions: that of Dr. Tomas Stockmann, advocating closure, and that of his brother, Mayor Peter Stockmann. “We all agree that fools are the majority on earth. Then why should we let the majority rule us?” provokes Dr. Stockmann. For Ibsen, the paradoxes of democratic life remain of great interest today. When this urgency meets a powerful and timely text such as An Enemy of the People, the challenge of staging becomes active—seeking effectiveness in storytelling—and receptive, listening and learning from what such a dense work still reveals about power, corruption, the common good, and personal interest.
