NEW YORK — Actual life might be stranger and extra thrilling than fiction, notably when the road between the 2 dissolves at spitting distance. When rousing protesters stood and approached the stage at Thursday’s efficiency of “An Enemy of the Folks” at Circle within the Sq. Theatre, the demonstration appeared much less like a disruption than an in any other case stolid revival delivering an invigorating coup.Jeremy Robust was standing on a bartop, a self-righteous-rebel posture not unfamiliar to “Succession” scion Kendall Roy, whose notoriety has helped flip Henrik Ibsen’s considerably stiff 1882 morality story right into a scorching Broadway ticket. Robust’s character, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, was about to earn his title moniker, utilizing a town-hall-style assembly to sentence the soon-to-open native baths for spewing poisoned water.Cue the local weather activists: Affiliated with a bunch referred to as Extinction Rebel, they drew an express connection between the small-town Norwegian drama and an pressing international disaster, shouting “the oceans are rising and can swallow this metropolis” and “no theater on a lifeless planet!” Some actors howled again in character whereas workers scrambled to finish the interruption. Watch the movies and also you’ll see that nearly nobody within the viewers, together with myself, appeared stunned.That’s as a result of Amy Herzog’s new model of the textual content, and this in-the-round staging by her husband Sam Gold, was already aiming to blur distinctions between previous and current. (Patrons had simply been invited onstage without spending a dime pictures of Linie Aquavit, throughout a quick intermission that appeared like sponcon for Norway.)The boldfaced themes of Ibsen’s parable — the delicacy of fact within the face of mob mentality, the unfold of misinformation by the press, the prizing of cash on the expense of nature — hardly want updating.However Herzog, who tailored final season’s acclaimed revival of “A Doll’s Home,” additionally refashions Ibsen’s story with a streamlined, modern vernacular. In crisp, plain-spoken dialogue, the motion clocks in at slightly below two hours, with some characters excised — Thomas is now a widower — and others beefed up, most notably his daughter Petra (an interesting Victoria Pedretti), whose heat and integrity lend the proceedings some coronary heart.There may be solely a modest degree of ardour to the transient courting of Petra by the newspaper editor Hovstad (a strong Caleb Eberhardt), who flips from her father’s strongest ally to his most outspoken foe, refusing to publish Thomas’s water-contamination research as soon as it turns into clear the information may result in the city’s monetary wreck.Sharp. Witty. Considerate. Join the Type Memo e-newsletter.However the manufacturing’s puzzling lack of fireplace (regardless of stunning, lantern-rich lighting design by Isabella Byrd) originates with the nice physician himself. Robust carries Thomas’s convictions like a free hand on a briefcase, sustaining a placid composure at the same time as he makes a lethal discovery after which will get battered by betrayals making an attempt to show it. Well-known for his extreme-sport performing strategy, Robust appears alive to each second onstage however not totally implicated of their penalties — even when the latter go away him curled up on the ground.The gears of Ibsen’s logic flip at a modest tempo — how does Thomas not instantly get that fixing the water drawback could be costly? — permitting audiences to leap forward and watch the characters catch up. Dramatizing the delayed epiphanies of a supposedly good man is hard, and Robust takes an understated strategy. Ditto to his indignant oration calling his haters an ignorant and complacent horde. After the blazing cries of actual protesters, Robust’s supply appeared all of the extra subdued.The pairing of Robust reverse Michael Imperioli, making his Broadway debut as Peter, Thomas’s brother and the mayor who leads the cost in opposition to him, lends the revival a sure cable-drama status. However “The White Lotus” star’s bottled-storm-cloud depth spreads skinny onstage, and the fraught fraternity between the rival siblings is simply intermittently plausible.Gold’s consideration to texture and tactile element asks audiences to lean in; the play’s early scenes foster an engrossing intimacy later blasted aside by civic controversy. From the fragile border on Petra’s woolen scarf (costumes are by David Zinn) to the Rosemaling patterns painted on the white set (by the design collective Dots), the manufacturing creates a seductive and convincing world within the realm of the senses. But it surely took a startling ambush to jolt the ethical of the story into the second.An Enemy of the Folks, via June 16 at Circle within the Sq. Theatre in New York. 2 hours. anenemyofthepeopleplay.com.