HOUSTON -- Question for the day: If you were an artistic director of a long-established troupe that had never produced any Ibsen at all, what would your debut choice be?

For Rebecca Greene Udden, founder of Main Street Theater, the answer is An Enemy of the People. Ibsen's towering drama, in which a tainted water supply pits the individual conscience of a high-minded doctor against the collective self-interest of a tourist town, is scheduled to run through Feb. 8.

To Udden, Enemy was a natural choice for her 23-year-old troupe because it is both timeless and contemporary.

"On a universal level, it shows how people are moved, and how to move people. And while Enemy is being mounted as a straight period piece, with the greenhouse effect and global warming continuing to loom, it is prescient about the economics of science."

An Enemy of the People is at Main Street Theater in Houston. For tickets, $12 - $17, call l (713) 524-6706. -- By Peter Szatmary
Texas Correspondent