CREDITORS. To 15 November.

London.

CREDITORS
by August Strindberg new version by David Greig.

Donmar Warehouse To 15 November 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 25 Oct 2.30pm (+Touch Tour 1.30pm).
BSL Signed 3 Nov.
Captioned 30 Oct 7.30pm.
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.

TICKETS: 0870 060 6624 (no booking fee).
www.donmarwarehouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 October.

Clear and strong dispatch from the Strindberg war-zone.
In the full flow of loathing and contempt about relations between the sexes, August Strindberg wrote Creditors (1888) in the wake of his two best-known plays Miss Julie and The Father. Like them it has a build-up to the main (in this case, sole) female’s arrival onstage, setting the agenda at a high level of emotional temperature and volatility, leading to madness by the play’s end.

It’s even more a chamber piece than Miss Julie; even the Donmar could be rather open a space, so designer Ben Stones has built the stage-level high, creating in the process a more isolated, tight feel than is usual here, for the hotel attic-room loomed over by huge windows with blinds, with little furniture apart from the two, separated single beds.

This is the room which writer Tekla and her second, artist husband Adolph are revisiting. It’s also the place where Gustav underlines the solidity Adolph’s found in moving from painting to sculpture, having sculpted Tekla’s faceless form. This sculpture, repeatedly wheeled around on its trolley, moves from being an expression of Adolph’s love to stand for an incapacitating sexual obsession; it’s the only other significant furnishing in the near-clinically white room that – a few sounds apart – is isolated from the world outside.

The single action presented here divides into several duologues, the subsequent ones deriving from the men’s opening discussion. Gustav’s own agenda is made clear later, but is soon suggested in Owen Teale’s commanding presence and voice, its Welsh undertow providing a forceful denunciation, the sort of destabilisation usually associated with Strindberg’s women – Laura, who drives The Father into a straitjacket, or Miss Julie’s déclassé sexual hysterics. Though, in light of the emotional balances in Creditors, the later dominance of butler Jean over mistress Julie needs re-examining; it’s the overpowering sex-drive itself that becomes culpable.

Teale, circling the room, is offset by Tom Burke’s impressionable young Adolph and by the initial happiness of Anna Chancellor’s Tekla. Her playful energy and sexual joy are undermined by her newly-soured husband, curdling the holiday into the distress delineated in Alan Rickman’s direct and clear production.

Adolph: Tom Burke.
Gustav: Owen Teale.
Tekla: Anna Chancellor.

Director: Alan Rickman.
Designer: Ben Stones.
Lighting: Howard Harrison.
Sound/Composer: Adam Cork.
Costume: Fotini Dimou.
Assistant director: Abbey Wright.

2008-10-06 07:33:38