HOW should a director approach a classic? Offer a radical update or respect the period and setting of the original? Both methods may be equally valid, as proved by two current revivals of Ibsen and Chekhov, which are poles apart yet equally spectacular.
Ibsen’s , now at the Duke of York’s in a production by Thomas Ostermeier, is a play that positively invites rebooting. First staged in 1883, it shows Dr Stockmann, the medical officer of a small spa town, discovering that the baths on which the place’s livelihood depends are toxic. He expects to be hailed as a hero. Instead, he is condemned by the local mayor, who happens to be his brother,.
