Marler Stone – Memphis Flyer

The setting: a community with a popular water attraction. The conflict: There’s something dangerous lurking in the water. One man knows the truth, but vested interests warn that panic can be expensive. No, I’m not talking about Steven Spielberg’s famous shark flick. Nor am I referring to some future Michael Moore documentary about public utilities in Flint, Michigan. Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, An Enemy of the People, may not be as well-known (or action-packed) as Jaws, but it tells the kind of political horror story modern audiences will immediately recognize.

An Enemy of the People, as adapted by Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller, arrives in Memphis courtesy of regional veteran Marler Stone and his newly christened CentreStage Theatre company. It tells the story of Dr. Stockmann, who discovers that his town’s public bath is badly contaminated. He’s initially thanked for his vigilance but ultimately opposed by the very people he sought to protect. Over the course of the play, Stockmann discovers just how hard it can be to stand alone, especially when the truth is unpopular.

At 78, Stone shows few signs of slowing his artistic output. “There are a lot of plays I want to do,” he says, rattling off a list of classic shows ranging from Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge to the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel. “I want to do things that are relevant,” he says.

Stone marvels that An Enemy of the People was admired both by Miller, a lion of the literary left, and by objectivist icon Ayn Rand. “I wondered why,” he says.

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean wasn’t on director Marler Stone’s to-do list. The popular Memphis-area actor and director wanted to try his hand with Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen’s jaundiced drama about corruption in a spa town whose entire economy is threatened by a contaminated water supply. Stone took his ambitious plan to the New Moon Theatre Company, thinking it would be a perfect fit for the TheatreWorks-based troupe well known for embracing difficult material and breathing new life into neglected classics. But New Moon likes to surprise, and things didn’t turn out quite the way Stone had planned.

“The board had elected to do Jimmy Dean,” he says, admitting he wasn’t all that familiar with Ed Graczyk’s 1976 melodrama about the Disciples of James Dean, an all-girl fan club hopelessly devoted to the Rebel Without a Cause actor. “At first, I told the cast this was a heavy drama and we wouldn’t be holding for laughs. Last week, I told them we’d be holding for laughs,” Stone says, allowing that he’s developed an appreciation for the humor and an affection for the play, originally staged on Broadway by filmmaker Robert Altman, who went on to make the 1982 film version.

Hoping to better understand the script, Stone contacted Graczyk, who related a story about the time he visited Marfa, Texas, where James Dean shot his last film, Giant. There the playwright saw the decaying remains of the set. Shortly thereafter, the play’s title came to him fully formed in a dream.

“We’re going to be doing the play exactly the way he wants it done,” says Stone, who would have had a much harder time bonding with Ibsen who died in 1906.