Video: Jeremy Strong and Team Open Up About What to Expect from AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Succession's Jeremy Strong is returning to Broadway alongside soprano star Michael Imperioly

in a brand new revival of Ipsons and Enemy of the People

It will run for 16 weeks at Circle in a Square with a beautiful new translation by Amy Herzog

directed by her husband, Sam Gold, and we're here at the Edition Hotel

for the show's press conference, moderated by Tony Kushner. How did this production come about

What drew you to the play? When did you start thinking about doing enemy of the people

Well, the honest answer is that the director approached me, Sam Gold

He had, because I was working on a doll's house and I had all of these books about Ibsen, biographies

books of all his plays lying around because I was doing a kind of deep dive. And I think I should, I'm sorry that I'm taking your story

but since we're married, I think I own half of it. So at some point, Sam picked up one of the volumes of plays

and read an enemy of the people and immediately thought of Jeremy, who's a dear old friend and collaborator of both of ours

and spoke to Jeremy about doing it. And he told me this, and I said

do you have a translator in mind? And he said, would you like to translate it

And I'm going to admit right now that I actually didn't know the play very well before then

I was, there are a lot of Ibsen plays that were so important to me growing up, but this one was kind of a new discovery

To be honest returning to the stage was not something sort of on my radar It been a long time since I done a play The last play was a little over 10 years ago and was Amy play

The Great God Pan. That was the last time. That was the last time, which feels like a..

That's when we met. And backstage and stalked you. And, you know, I've known Amy since 1997 in college

I've known Sam since 2001, I think. So there was always always..

there was always a hope that we would find something to do together. But I read the play that day

I read the Miller translation. And it really struck me like a bolt of lightning, the play

The sense of, I've heard it described as a man confronting the necessity of action

at the same time as the impossibility of action. And I thought that that was an incredible dilemma and engine of a play

the last play I did on Broadway, the only play I did on Broadway

was a man for all seasons. And, you know, similarly, a play about sort of speaking truth to power

And I was so moved by the, as Sam says, the sort of allegory of the play

this idea of a man discovering that the water system that is feeding the health spa of the town

but in a sense the wellspring of life, the moral, ethical, spiritual wellspring of life is poisoned

And you see the powers that be in the town they have a vested interest in protecting the status quo and in economic interest And reading the play it just ricocheted across every single thing that we living through and confronting

from the Court of Public Opinion to the climate crisis, which really struck me when I read the play

this idea of an ineluctible fact, someone presenting an objective. empirical fact pointing to the destruction of a town and seeing the powers that be ostracize

that man. I think it's more timely now than it was since, probably since it was written

in a strange way. I mean, Miller kind of leaned into the McCarthyism and that aspect of

what was very pressing and important at the time, but it really seems to hold much more weight

now. Definitely than it did back then. Yeah. And I mean, I've admired Jeremy's work for a long

time, so, you know, the idea working with him was very exciting and thrilling

Same. What I love the most about Sam's productions are the visual look of them. What will this

show look like? It's a period production. So we're really getting very detail-oriented

about Norway in 1882. It's going to play it circle in the square, completely in the round

I really love working in the round I do it whenever someone lets me I love putting the audience that close to the actors and in different relationships to the actors There isn one way exactly to see it It a lot There something very live and almost improvisational about the way the evening can work in the round because everyone has a

slightly different experience and you sort of can't control it. So it'll be like the audience

is looking through the candlelit windows of a beautiful home in 1880s Norway and getting to sit

very close to the dining room table of a family and colleagues who are having a really important

political debate that is going to destroy Thomas and potentially, you know

sicken or kill people in the town. It's a really great space to that theater in the round

The only time I've done, I've worked there was on Fun Home

and obviously that was a really, it was a really good feeling to be in the building

to feel the audience's energy, and I'm really excited to be back there

I have to say also, just on a personal note, when they did, when the late great Phil Hoffman and John C. Riley did True West there

I was still in college, but I went to see it five or six times, and, you know, sat in the back row

and I still, to this day, remember the feeling of the lights going down

and the anticipation and the flutter of programs and a great wish of mine to one day get to be an actor

and get to do a play maybe here. So it's a real fulfillment to be working there