Of all the great canonical dramatists of the modern era, Henrik Ibsen remains the angriest. His run of plays written at the height of the Naturalist era, A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People, are among the most excoriating and rageful texts ever written. Unifaun Theatre Productions presents an adaptation of the Ibsen play by British dramatist Brad Birch and the results are something of a cautionary tale.

The plot is simple and direct. A small town relies on the revenues from a spa emanating from springs further up the mountain. Dr Stockmann has found that a nearby factory is polluting the springs and tries to tell all but is thwarted by the financial interests of corrupt, local politicians, one of them his brother. His determination to ‘do the honourable thing’ results in his being vilified by the town and his family as An Enemy of the People.

It is tempting to think that, as an artistic convention, Naturalism has always been with us. The idea of throwing a mirror up to life and presenting on the stage an indiscriminate and random reflection of reality as we know it has become the predominant assumption in our dramatic discourse.

Yet, Naturalism was never this. Naturalism was the artistic movement that denied its presence; Naturalism hid behind the poetry and symbolism of Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg’s words. When you tackle these great shibboleths of modern drama you must acknowledge the tradition that they were born of, this is no unselective mirror – there is painstaking choice at work here. The moment a lantern is brought into a room, the incessant rain, a dead bird fallen from the sky, all these work to push the drama forward and help us to enter into the Naturalist contract – we heighten our senses, we peer anxiously into the shadows of these neurotic rooms as the truth slowly reveals itself.

Brad Birch has largely excised the poetry and resultant symbolism from his adaptation and it is a horrible mistake, an artistic car-crash. In seeking to foreground the political implications of the play Birch and Unifaun have ignored the very language the original text communicates in and what we are left with is a spare, dogmatic sequence of primary-coloured vocal exertions that convince no-one, not even the cast attempting to perform this ill-begotten child.

The results are something of a cautionary tale

Watching the Maly Theatre or The Moscow Arts Theatre perform these great plays is an almost symphonic experience. The level to which the actors inhabit the lives of their characters, observe the very slightest psychological gestures, even breath in tune to their inner-urgings is obsessive, dangerous and supremely watchable.

The cast of An Enemy of the People shuffles around the set uncertain and afraid; arms folded alternates with hands in pockets, eccentric stressing of odd words, searching for lines, searching for that blessed last word that takes them back to the dressing-room.

Not one performer has a convincing through-line in this production. As a member of the audience who has seen this play a few times, I had no idea of what the characters wanted, where they had been – the basic ingredients that Naturalism asks of the actor. They bought with them no previous life onto the stage.

Instead, they reeled from one instance of dull, imperative dialogue to another. The great acting-teacher Constantin Stanislavski stressed the importance of the actors understanding the text. For if they don’t, how are we in the audience expected to? What poetic presence remains in the play is embodied in the character of Billing (geddit?), an ornithologist who pops into each act to ramble nonsensically about the birds of the region. The symbolism in Birch’s adaptation has been limited to this poor, thankless character who finds himself unwittingly acting in a separate play from the rest of the cast.

The poor actors are not helped one whit by a stage design that resembles nothing so much as an Ikea showroom. A large plain chipboard table and little pine stools inexplicably stand in for Dr Stockmann’s study.

Behind this, and dominating the whole mise-en-scene, is an oversized, upturned Ikea bed that the cast hide behind until their entrances. It is also lit from behind in a token nod to aesthetic choice over function. There is also a smoke-hazer running throughout the performance that makes the whole place look like a budget-sauna where all the punters have dressed up for the occasion.

Which brings me to a woeful tendency that I’ve noticed over the past few months from lighting designers who take it into their volt-crazed heads to plunge the central characters into Stygian darkness while the rest of the stage is lit as brightly as Woolworth’s window – why?

There is, however, one directorial conceit that simply surpasses all others I have witnessed on a professional stage. That is the ear-splittingly loud insertion of radio-interference whenever a character mentions the pollution of the Springs – effectively drowning out their words.

It’s an unintentionally hilarious device that reminds me of the comedian Les Dawson dressed as a large lady discussing her gynaecological problems. Whenever she reached a particularly graphic passage she would simply mouth the words and make exaggerated and pained facial motions to promote her distress. The poor actors in this play are similarly afflicted with the device if not the actual disease, a rare symbol in this otherwise utilitarian and unimaginative production.