An Enemy of the People, Belvoir

For me, this is a near-miss. A combination of a couple of creative decisions means that a promising update of Ibsen's classic drama of standing alone against popular opinion ends up feeling just that little bit flatter than it should.

First, the good. Kate Mulvany is a powerhouse performer and casting her as Ibsen's protagonist gives the play so much additional power. And when the rubber hits the road in the second act (particularly in the public meeting at the top of the second act), Ibsen's play feels utterly current in its look at whistleblowing, how an individual can be demolished by the society around them and how a conspiracy of silence actually works. There's also strong imagery in the basic design.by Mel Page (both in the last scene of the first act and the second scene of the second act - though the design in the last scene of the first act both looks visibly impressive and doesnt' entirely make sense in the situation of the play - why is Dr STockman walking through a steam room when the steam is made up of toxic water? Is the toxicity removed simply by boiling it? In which case why isn't she just suggesting boiling it first?)

Still, that same design also weakens the production. The glass-boxed patio, while useful for a couple of stage images, means that too much of the action is played at a slight cut-off from the audience (miked inside the box, with voices amplified outside), and it means much of the second scene of act one and the second scene of act two just don't feel quite as immediate and engaging. Like all stage devices, these need to be used carefully and this just feels like a recycle.

And the gender change feels like it hasn't gone far enough. Peter Carroll, Leon Ford and Steve LeMarquand in particular are fine and well regarded actors (and Charles Wu and Kenneth Moraleda are equally as strong, if less well known), but the play would only gain if one or more of these roles had been cast female - as it stands, this presentation of the play simplifies things to "good women versus bad men", and that's surely too simplistic a way of telling the story. There's interesting complex roles going begging for women here, and it'd give us a wider sense of the world if women were allowed to play both sides of the debate rather than just being stuck on one.

Melissa Reeves adaptation also sometimes feels a bit under-thought through  - she introduces a thread of class-consciousness into the play, but it feels imposed rather than part of the material (it doesn't have a parallel in Ibsen and while it's not the worst idea in the world, it's too marginal to matter), and there are occasions when some of the dialogue fails to sit comfortably on the actors.

Still, there's Mulvaney and the rest of the cast delivering strong performances in what is, in its bones, a strong play (even if there are occasional hiccups). This is a "almost gets there" show.