Tony spotlight: Jeremy Strong (‘An Enemy of the People’) bares his soul in an understated but powerful performance
This article contains spoilers about the 2024 Broadway production of “An Enemy of the People.”
There will likely be few scenes this Broadway season more harrowing than the climax of Sam Gold’s “An Enemy of the People,” in which a town hall meeting called by Dr. Thomas Stockmann devolves into verbal and physical assault. In the aftermath of the scene’s brutality against the Norwegian doctor, who warns his community that their waters are contaminated, actor Jeremy Strong emerges from a crouched position on the stage floor in the Circle in the Square Theatre, where he has huddled and shrunk his body down to withstand a torrent of blows. It is a visceral moment of live theatre, one that the actor commits to wholeheartedly and that the Tony Awards should nominate.
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What leads up to that frightening display of ignorance and animus is made all the richer by Strong’s performance. In Amy Herzog’s new adaptation of one of Henrik Ibsen’s most famous plays, the character of Mrs. Katherine Stockmann, the doctor’s wife, has been excised, and his daughter Petra (Victoria Pedretti) steps into her shoes as family caregiver in the wake of her mother’s death. When Strong makes his first entrance in the play, his house is bustling with lively young radical thinkers and, observing the merriment, he says, “I’m sorry none of you knew Petra’s mother” and, to his daughter, “You’re more and more like her.” Strong pulls the audience in with that quiet expression of grief, and that sorrow inflects much of his performance in a way no other actors have had the opportunity to do.
Once Stockmann receives confirmation of his theory that the restorative waters in their spa town are in fact poisonous, the doctor never wavers from his commitment to rectify the issue and is emboldened by the support of his friends in the press, played by Caleb Eberhardt, Matthew August Jeffers and Thomas Jay Ryan. The character’s confidence lets Strong give us some ace clowning as he dons his brother Mayor Peter Stockmann’s (Michael Imperioli) “official hat” and masquerades around in it. In a play that can at times feel oppressively dark — appropriately so, given its message about ignoring science in favor of politics and profit — it is a much needed moment of levity that the Emmy Award winner mines for all its worth. It also comes right before the rug is pulled out from underneath him as his brother has turned his comrades against him.
From there, “An Enemy of the People” slides briskly into that unsettling town hall scene, where Strong stands tall on a bar that has descended onto the stage and tries to engage in serous discussion with the townspeople. Part of the immense power of Strong’s performance is how he avoids the temptation to raise his volume to the level of the riotous townspeople. For all of his character’s indignation, his performance remains even-keeled. It is the actor’s calm nature that makes the assault he suffers all the more devastating.
In the play’s final scene, Strong does get to lean a bit more into the character’s anger. Confronted with one more indignity — his former friends have come to his house to blackmail him, hoping to make quick money if he recants his position on the contaminated water — Dr. Stockmann strips off his coat and unbuttons his shirt to give them the clothes off his back, dropping to his knees to implore them to do whatever they want with him so long as they publish his report. When the dust settles and he and his daughter decide to stay in the town, he implores her to “imagine” that their sacrifices will one day be worth it. Strong makes these lines of dialogue simultaneously hopeful and sorrowful.
Strong has received stellar notices for his performance. Jesse Green (New York Times) praised him as “spectacularly accurate yet non-showy.” David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter) described his “bristling intensity,” writing, “The role of Thomas Stockman feels tailor-made for the actor’s dangerous energy.” Similarly, David Gordon (TheaterMania) said his is a “compelling, concentrated portrayal” of the main character, Dalton Ross (Entertainment Weekly) deemed the actor “captivating,” and Daniel D’Addario (Variety) suggested that he “should return to the stage as often as he can.”
Strong currently ranks third in the combined Tony predictions of Gold Derby users in the Best Actor in a Play category. With eight performers eligible for the award — pending future eligibility rulings from the Tony administration committee — there will only be four nominees in the category, which we anticipate to be rounded out by current front-runner Leslie Odom Jr. (“Purlie Victorious”), Michael Stuhlbarg (“Patriots”) and Steve Carell (“Uncle Vanya”). “An Enemy of the People” plays a limited engagement at the Circle in the Square Theatre until June 16, 2024, the date of the 77th Tony Awards.
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