Reviews: ‘An Enemy of the People’

written by Ana on 27 February 2024

Here’s a small list of reviews of An Enemy of the People from the most known news sites that highlight Jessica’s part:

TATLER:

Smith is well supported by the rest of the ensemble. Jessica Brown-Findlay (Downton Abbey) finds the right balance as Stockmann’s wife Kat, a person who struggles between loyalty to her husband, whilst reckoning with his undeniable flaws. There are 20th-century music cues throughout the show, including Oasis’s Stand by Me and multiple tracks from The Clash’s London Calling. Most notably, David Bowie’s Changes is heard on multiple occasions. At various points, the actors are singing and playing instruments. At first, it feels a little obvious, as if the songs are explicitly telling the audience how they’re meant to feel. As the play builds to its final crescendo, there is a more deliberate reasoning for the way it is used. During some of the more intense sequences, music is used not as a tool for fighting oppression, but as a way to ignore it.

THE GUARDIAN:

Stockmann is a firebrand in turn-up jeans opposite his town major brother, Peter (Paul Hilton), sour and self-righteous in a suit. His wife, Katharina (Jessica Brown Findlay), is a schoolteacher (rather than his teacher daughter, Petra, of the original script). They are new parents in the present day yet the milieu, with guitars, singalongs and the couple’s fellow band members who wander across the Stockmanns’ home, give it the sense of a 1960s commune. Not all of it works: Katharina is a cypher whose illicit kiss with a character goes nowhere.

TIME OUT:

A deliciously punchy final third sees Stockmann and Katharina reckon with the fallout from his meltdown. It’s hard to exact say where Ibsen starts, Ostermeier and Borchmeyer begin and Macmillan continues, but for a production conceived with the specific backdrop of post credit crunch Germany, it slots immaculately into 2024 Britain, the town’s desperation to save the spa chiming perfect with the recent spate of bankrupt English councils.

RADIO TIMES:

The chemistry between Smith and Jessica Brown Findlay as the doctor’s wife, Katharina Stockmann, is easy, while Paul Hilton steals the show throughout with his hilarious, yet ominous, portrayal of the doctor’s brother and mayor of the town, Peter Stockmann. For any audience members unsure on how they feel, the ending will be what secures An Enemy of the People as one for the ages. A small and mesmerising moment between Smith’s Stockmann and Findlay’s Katharina had every audience member leaving asking themselves and each other the one big question upon which everything hinges: “What would you do?”

 

 FEB 20: “An Enemy Of The People” – Press Night

written by Ana on 26 February 2024

Jessica and the cast of An Enemy of the People have joined a Press Night event for the official premiere of the playing. Using a red vintage dressed Ziggy offered her, Jessica stunned in red!

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See the post before this for reviews on this play!

New Project: An Enemy of the People

written by Ana on 28 October 2023

Jessica Brown Findlay stars in An Enemy of the People at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.

The play features Matt Smith, Nigel Lindsay, Priyanga Burford, Zachary Hart, Paul Hilton and Shubham Saraf. Goes live from February 6th to April 6th, 2024.

The production is directed by Thomas Ostermeier, and this is the first English language production of his acclaimed German version of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play.

Click here to buy tickets.

What is truth without power?

Doubt spreads faster than disease in Ibsen’s thought-provoking play about truth in a society driven by power and money.

When Dr Stockmann makes an unbelievable discovery about the healing waters in his local baths, he holds the future of the town in his hands, but those with everything to lose refuse to accept his word. As the battle goes beyond contaminated water, barriers are broken in this contemporary production as Ostermeier shows us why this perennial classic will be relevant forever.

BBC to air ‘Hamlet’

written by Ana on 07 September 2017

Britain’s BBC says it will broadcast in 2018 the stage production of Hamlet, starring Sherlock alum Andrew Scott as the title character.

Angus Wright plays Claudius, Jessica Brown Findlay plays Ophelia and Juliet Stevenson plays Gertrude.

Directed by Robert Icke and based on the classic work by William Shakespeare, the play transferred to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre for a limited season following a sell-out run at the Almeida this year. It will wrap at the Harold Pinter Theatre on Sept. 2.

“Andrew Scott’s Hamlet is utterly thrilling. His performance makes each familiar word of the play feel like it is being newly discovered. The staging in a modern-day Denmark makes for a startlingly resonant and challenging production. I am delighted that it is coming to BBC Two,” Patrick Holland, controller of BBC Two, said in a statement.

“It has been a real joy to work with such a gifted and dedicated company of actors on bringing this most-famous play to audiences in 2017. The production has been on a wonderful journey from the Almeida to the West End, and I am very much looking forward to this next step on BBC Two. To be able to offer our version of Hamlet to as wide and diverse an audience as possible has always been of paramount importance to us, and now we are thrilled to be able to bring it to people across the country,” Icke added.

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