IMMORTAL `ENEMY'.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Henrik Ibsen often is thought of as a grumpy Norwegian who wrote impenetrably gloomy plays about social hyprocrisy and emotional repression.

Well, it's time to think again. In Trevor Nunn's enthralling new production of ``An Enemy of the People,'' Ibsen comes off as practically the flashiest playwright this side of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose ``Cats'' and ``Sunset Boulevard'' Nunn took to Broadway.

Consider the opening scene of this relentlessly kinetic effort by Britain's Royal National Theatre company, which opened last week at the Ahmanson Theatre. Almost before we've found our seats, some 40 actors sweep us into a bustling panorama of a 19th-century coastal Norwegian village. Fishermen barter, businessmen gossip, and a brass band wends its way through the whole mercantilist mob.

The procession makes an apt metaphor for Ibsen's great theme: Fall in line with the masses, or prepare to suffer the consequences. Pity men like Dr. Tomas Stockmann, the play's quixotic hero, who insist on marching to their own offbeat drummers.

But is Stockmann (Ian McKellen) ultimately a victim of uncompromising integrity or monumental hubris? Does he deserve to be treated as a savior or a pariah for discovering that the town's lucrative spa baths are being poisoned by industrial waste - then going noisily public with the truth?

Among this production's many virtues is that it leaves those questions ajar, making you squirm for answers. Working with Christopher Hampton's sinewy new translation, and a flat-out excellent cast, director Nunn has retooled Ibsen's wordy contraption into a supple cinematic drama. Like John Napier's set design - a rotating Rubik's cube that reassembles itself into a house, a print shop and a meeting hall - this production generates nonstop excitement and tension from its shifting moods and perspectives.

The engine driving the whole thing is McKellen's spry, funny, expertly measured performance as Stockmann, a man with the moral rectitude of an Old Testament prophet and the political acumen of a petri dish.

In Arthur Miller's Cold War-era translation, Stockmann became a stand-in for Joe McCarthy's Red Scare victims, a towering martyr surrounded by moral pygmies. But that's only half the character. McKellen gives us the other half, showing not only Stockmann's courage but his vanity and naivete in thinking the townspeople are going to reward him for killing their golden goose.

When Stockmann finds that the local water supply is crawling with bacteria, he's far too pleased with himself to break the news gently to his brother Peter (Stephen Moore), the town's ruthlessly pragmatic mayor. Twitching, rolling his eyes maniacally, unable to sit still for more than five seconds, McKellen's Stockmann is spacy, impractical, perverse - in truth, perhaps, a little unbalanced. He's the polar opposite of his brother, a drably authoritarian bureaucrat who could pass for a Soviet commissar. Moore's crusty, embittered portrayal, however, is every bit as impressive as McKellen's more flamboyant turn.

The large supporting cast is faultless, particularly Pip Donaghy as the wary printer Aslaksen, Paul Higgins as a would-be radical newspaper editor who crumbles in the face of economic expediency, and Charlotte Cornwell, delivering a wise, gently resigned performance as Stockmann's loyal, long-suffering wife.

``An Enemy of the People'' starts off bumpily, mostly because Nunn insists on letting the dialogue flow forward in brisk, naturalistic fashion.

But once the tempo settles down, Nunn's method yields some spectacular payoffs, such as the Act 2 opening scene in which Stockmann publicly confronts his accusers. Instantly, the Ahmanson is transformed into an angry meeting hall, complete with hecklers shouting threats from the aisles and an undercurrent of violent hysteria.

It's not hard to imagine a similar scene occurring at Love Canal, Chernobyl or anyplace else where the first casualty of politics is truth. Still kicking and screaming at age 116, ``An Enemy of the People'' presents a view of cringing civic conformity that, sadly, still feels all too timely.

THE FACTS

What: ``An Enemy of the People.''

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through Sept. 6.

Tickets: $15 to $52.50. Call [phone].

Our rating: Four Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Dr. Tomas Stockmann (Ian McKellen) marches to his own offbeat drummer in ``An Enemy of the People,'' at the Music Center's Ahmanson Theatre.