Nineteenth-century Swedish playwright
August Strindberg was and is notorious as a misogynist. On this outing,
the two men in his triangular 1889 drama
Creditors seem at least as hateful;
how much of this is due to the passage of time, to David Greig’s
choices in his new version of the text and/or to Alan Rickman’s
direction is moot. The introduction to an earlier edition of the play
describes painter-turned-sculptor Adolph as “the victim of a fate
stronger than himself” and university professor Gustav as “the
conqueror of adverse and humiliating circumstances”, but here they seem
respectively a febrile paranoid and an Iago figure. In fact, merge
Othello with Cassio and Roderigo, assume that Desdemona is guilty as
hell and this could be a distillation of the Shakespeare drama so
sensationally staged at this address a year ago.
In the first of the three two-handed scenes, we see Adolph expressing
his gratitude to his new friend for re-focusing his artistic impulses.
As the scene progresses, however, it becomes apparent that what Gustav
is really doing is fuelling Adolph’s insecurities about his older,
previously-married novelist wife. The strife between the couple is then
presented on the latter’s return from a business trip to the hotel
where all three are staying, and which by no coincidence was also the
venue of her first honeymoon; after Adolph storms out, it comes as no
surprise whatever to find Tekla identifying the newly re-entered Gustav
as her first husband.
Anna Chancellor finds a coherent line through Tekla’s simmering broth
of domineering nannying, brazen taunting, weakness of resolve,
intellectual fire and finally defiant integrity... no mean feat, as you
can imagine. Tom Burke’s Adolph is as physically ravaged as he is
psychologically, the gaze of his sunken eyes fixed on his interlocutors
but unable to bore into them. As Gustav, Owen Teale at first feels as
if he is merely mouthing his lines. However, this is not the actor
taking it easy, but the character biding his time until he can begin to
work his Mephistophelean spell upon first Adolph and then Tekla; by the
time his full fury and exultation are unleashed in the final scene,
Teale is incandescent. The title refers to artistic, spiritual and
moral debts owed by each to the others, and brought to account in the
most brutal way during these 90 minutes.
Written for the Financial
Times.