This classic play was adapted by Arthur Miller in the 1950s in a production that opened at the Broadhurst Theater on December 28, 1950. It starred Academy Award winner Fredric March and his wife Florence Eldridge as well as Morris Carnovsky; future Oscar winner Rod Steiger was a "townsperson." Miller's adaptation was presented on National Educational Television in 1966, in a production starring James Daly. It was also made into a movie of the same name in 1978, starring Steve McQueen.[6] The BBC then cast Robert Urquhart as "Tom Stockman" in their 1980 TV version, adapting the story and the cast names to reflect it now being set in a Scottish town.[7] In the creation of his adaptation of Ibsen's work, several changes were made by Miller to make the play more accessible and accepting to a 1950s audience, as opposed to Ibsen's late 1800s audience. Many major edits not only included the transformation of speech and language, but changes were made to the character of Dr. Stockmann to avoid having him champion eugenics. Throughout the play, Dr. Stockmann acts as a Christ figure. Miller found it necessary therefore to change Ibsen's use of genetic and racial theories from the late 1800s to further Dr. Stockmann's standing as a champion of the lower classes as opposed to a scientist with a belief in racial determinism and the importance of eugenics for "improving" people. For example, in Ibsen's original, a portion of Dr. Stockmann's speech to the people contained:
The masses are nothing but the raw material that must be fashioned into the people. Is it not so with all other living creatures on earth? How great the difference between a cultivated and an uncultivated breed of animals!... Don't you believe that the brain of a poodle has developed quite differently from that of a mongrel? Yes, you may depend upon that! It is educated poodles like this that jugglers train to perform the most extraordinary tricks. A common peasant-cur could never learn anything of the sort—not if he tried till Doomsday... we are animals... there is a terrible difference between men-poodles and men-mongrels.
— Dr. Stockmann, quoted in Bigsby (141)[8]
In Miller's adaptation, no such eugenics-positive screed is read. Miller keeps Dr. Stockmann's ideals as a character, and his dedication to facing down the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and governmental bureaucrats, but portrays him as more of a democratic thinker and socialist, while retaining some of the original character's ideas about the evolution of animals and humans, and the need to cultivate humane qualities in order to bring the masses to a more rational and educated level, so that they can fully participate in a democracy. In Miller's adaptation, part of the doctor's speech reads:
I put in a good many years in the north of our country. Up there the rulers of the world are the great seal and the gigantic squadrons of duck. Man lives on ice, huddled together in little piles of stones. His whole life consists of grubbing for food. Nothing more. He can barely speak his own language. And it came to me one day that it was romantic and sentimental for a man of my education to be tending these people. They had not yet reached the stage where they needed a doctor. If the truth were to be told, a veterinary would be more in order.
— Dr. Stockmann, Arthur Miller (93)[9]
A version was produced for Australian television in 1958.[10]
The 1972 Greek film O ehthros tou laou (An Enemy of the People) is an adaptation of the play, taking place in Greece during the mid-1930s.[11]
The play was the indirect inspiration for the blockbuster movie Jaws.[12]
Satyajit Ray's 1989 film Ganashatru was based on this play. In 1990, PBS produced the play for their show American Playhouse, starring William Anton and John Glover.[13]
In 2000 an adaptation of the play called Paragon Springs written by Steven Dietz premiered at Milwaukee Repertory theatre in Milwaukee Wisconsin, U.S.A. The play is set in "a small town in the American Midwest" in 1926.
An Enemy of the People (with the subtitle The strongest one is the one who stands alone), a Norwegian film released in 2004 and directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg, is an adaptation of Ibsen's play.
In 2007 Ouriel Zohar's troupe Compagnie Ouriel Zohar performed an adaptation for two actors only of An Enemy of the People, performed first in Paris, then Fréjus, Besançon (2008), Liège, Minsk, Valleyfield (Canada, 2009), and Porto Heli (Greece, 2010).[14]
In early 2013, a stage adaptation entitled "عدو الشعب" (Arabic: Enemy of the people or A Public Enemy) was organized and directed by Nora Amin (who played Doctor Stockmann's wife, with Tarek El-Dewiri as Doctor Stockmann) in Cairo. It was translated into colloquial Arabic and featured a rock-themed soundtrack played live on-set. Jointly sponsored by the Norwegian Embassy in Cairo and the Ibsen Studies Center in Norway, it received various positive reviews at a time when Egypt was plunged into deep political turmoil.[15][16]
A new adaptation by Robert Falls, based on a 19th-century translation by Eleanor Marx, was staged at Chicago's Goodman Theatre from March - April 2018.[17]
In Autumn 2021, a new National Theatre of Scotland adaptation entitled simply Enemy, authored by Keiran Hurley and directed by Finn den Hertog, toured Scotland. The play is set in a fictional Scottish town, is written using contemporary language and makes use of innovative technical effects such as overhead projected Twitter feeds, social media comments, and video live streams.
In 2024 at Duke of York's Theatre, Thomas Ostermeier directed an adaptation he co-wrote with Florian Borchmeyer. It was first staged in 2012, but was translated from German to English by Duncan Macmillan for the London performance.[18] Starring Matt Smith and Jessica Brown Findlay, the adaptation converts the Act IV town meeting into an audience participation event which allows contemporary issues to be aired.[19]
A new adaptation by Amy Herzog will premiere on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre in previews on February 27, 2024, with an opening night set for March 18. The production is directed by Sam Gold and stars Jeremy Strong, Michael Imperioli, and Victoria Pedretti.[20]
