Creditors (NHB Classic Plays)

August Strindberg, Howard Brenton

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788501743
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

Young artist Adolf is deeply in love with his new wife Tekla – but a chance meeting with a suave stranger shakes his devotion to the core.

Passionate, dangerously funny, and enduringly perceptive, Strindberg considered this wickedly enjoyable black comedy his masterpiece.

August Strindberg's play Creditors was written in the summer of 1888, and first staged at the Dagmar Theatre in Copenhagen in March 1889.

This English version by Howard Brenton was premiered in March 2019 in a co-production between Jermyn Street Theatre, London, and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, directed by Jermyn Street's Artistic Director Tom Littler.

The parlour of a small seaside hotel. A door in the rear wall opens onto a veranda with a view of the landscape. To the right of the door there is a table with newspapers upon it, to the left a chair and a chaise longue. In the left wall there is a door to another room.

ADOLF and GUSTAF are by the table.

ADOLF is working on a wax figure on a small banding wheel. His two crutches are beside him.

ADOLF. – all this is down to you.

GUSTAF. Nonsense.

ADOLF. No no! When my wife went away I was devastated. The first few days I just lay on a sofa. I felt I couldn’t move, it was like she’d taken my crutches with her, out of spite! My head was a mess, a rush of terrible fears and thoughts. In the end, I slept and woke, trying to get the old drive back, the urge to create, to make some sense of the world. But I was struggling. Then you came.

GUSTAF. Well, yes, you were in a hell of a state, hobbling about on those wretched things. But you’ve not revived because of me, you simply needed rest. Though I think you were craving for a little male company?

ADOLF. Maybe. I used to have lots of male friends but after I married I felt I didn’t need them, I was happy just to be with her. When I did begin to see people again my wife was jealous. She said she only wanted to be with me – but I discovered she was stealing my new friends, seeing them behind my back. So I was left alone, with my jealousy.

GUSTAF. A disease to which you are somewhat prone.

ADOLF. The truth is I was terrified of losing her – but I never thought she’d actually be unfaithful.

GUSTAF. The wife having a fling? Unimaginable to the husband.

ADOLF. A horror. My fear was that she’d fall under the influence of those people, that they’d have some control over me, through her. That really tormented me.

GUSTAF. So you and your wife were not – wholly of one mind?

ADOLF. Right, right, I’ll tell you everything. She – she – has an independent nature.

GUSTAF all but laughs.

What’s funny?

GUSTAF. No, go on – an independent nature –

ADOLF. That can’t accept anything from me –

GUSTAF. But plenty from others?

A pause.

ADOLF. She hates my opinions, just because they’re mine. Then, out of the blue, she’ll say something I’d said as if it were her idea. Friends of mine tell her things I’ve said and she makes them her own. But when I say something direct to her – oh no, no.

GUSTAF. So you’re not exactly – happy?

ADOLF. No, no, I am happy. She’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted. I’ve never wished for another.

GUSTAF. And never wished to be free?

ADOLF. No. Not at all. Well – sometimes I do imagine the peace – but whenever she leaves I long for her, as if I’ve lost my limbs – it’s strange, I feel she’s become part of my own body, an organ that’s grown inside of me and is taking away my will, even the desire to live. What the anatomists call the essence of life, it’s like I’ve given it to her.

GUSTAF. Well, that’s how it goes with women.

ADOLF. But why? When I met her she was full of life and her own ideas – I was nothing, childish, babbling about art, an empty vessel that she filled.

GUSTAF. But you helped her immensely, didn’t you? To develop artistically?

ADOLF. Not really. I was trying to push her but somehow she stopped growing.

GUSTAF. Yes, she did go off after her first book. And that more or less wrote itself, seeing it was about her first husband. Rich material – did you meet him? A blazing idiot, I hear.

ADOLF. No, we never met, he was out of the country for six months when she and I – but yes, from everything she says, he was a fool. I’m sure she was right.

GUSTAF. No doubt.

A pause.

Then why do you think she took him?

ADOLF. She didn’t know what he was like – we never do, do we, until afterwards!

GUSTAF. But isn’t that a good reason not to marry – until ‘afterwards’? I suppose he was a tyrant.

ADOLF. Suppose?

GUSTAF. Well, all husbands are. (Feels his way.) Aren’t you?

ADOLF. Me? I let my wife come and go whenever she wants –

GUSTAF. The least you can do, short of locking her up. How about her staying out all night – do you like that?

ADOLF. Of course not.

GUSTAF. So she does?

ADOLF does not reply. GUSTAF changes tack.

To be frank, I think you’re making a fool of yourself.

ADOLF. Is a man a fool for trusting his wife?

GUSTAF. Absolutely.

ADOLF. No! No! I dread being diminished like that – I’ll change! Change everything!

GUSTAF. Don’t get worked up, you don’t want another attack.

ADOLF. But when I go out at night that doesn’t make her a fool –

GUSTAF. My friend, this agonising is pointless, face it – the damage has been done.

ADOLF. What damage?

GUSTAF. Her first husband was a tyrant, so why did she marry him? As cover, so she could sneak away and carry on.

ADOLF. You think?

GUSTAF. And now you’re the cover story for your wife’s sins.

ADOLF. Me?

GUSTAF. The new husband. A mere chaperone.

ADOLF is absent, silent.

Am I right?

ADOLF. I don’t know, you live with a woman for years, not thinking of your life with her. And suddenly you’re forced to and you spiral down, I’ve been spiralling down – then, like a miracle, there you were! Gustaf, you’ve become my friend, my only friend. These past eight days you’ve given me back my will to live. I feel your magnetism pouring into me. You’re like a watchmaker, mending the mechanisms in my head, winding the mainspring. My thoughts are clear now, words make sense again, my voice rings true – can’t you hear?

GUSTAF. Oh yes. And I wonder why.

ADOLF. I don’t know. Tekla always accuses me of shouting. So I’m forever policing what I say.

GUSTAF. And, talking softly, you crawled under her thumb.

ADOLF. No, no I – (Turns it over in his mind.) It’s worse than that. I don’t want to talk about it.

A pause.

But yes, yes, you arrived and opened my eyes to what was happening to me artistically. I’d long been losing faith in painting, colour, the flat surface, I couldn’t get it to say what I wanted to say. Then you explained why. And I had an epiphany – I can no longer speak with colour alone.

GUSTAF. Are you sure you can’t paint any more? That you won’t have a relapse?

ADOLF. Absolutely! I’ve tested myself. After your attack on painting, as I went to bed, I went through all your arguments. I had a full night’s sleep and woke refreshed, full of energy, convinced you were wrong. So I grabbed my brushes, began a canvas and – nothing. The illusion was gone, just smears, coloured doodles. It was repulsive, it made me sick to think that I ever believed, and made others believe, that a painted canvas was something other than – just a painted canvas. I can’t paint any more, it’s as impossible as being a child again.

GUSTAF. And now you realise – that we live in a time that craves for reality, and realism can only be found in sculpture – the tactile presence of the three-dimensional.

ADOLF. Three dimensions, yes. (Hesitantly.) The body.

GUSTAF. And so now you are a sculptor. Which you always were, you just lost your way for a while – all you needed was a sign post, back to the right path. Do you have that feeling, the deep joy of being at one with your work?

ADOLF. Yes, I’m alive now.

GUSTAF. Can I see what you’ve begun to do?

ADOLF. It’s a female figure.

He reveals a sculpture.

GUSTAF. No model? But I can see it’s coming alive –

ADOLF (dully). But it’s – it’s going to be like someone, I know it. That woman is alive in me, and I am in her.

GUSTAF. Ah. Do you know what transfusion is?

ADOLF. Of blood? Yes.

GUSTAF. You’ve bled into each other. I only guessed it before but looking at this figure I see it – you’ve loved her deeply.

ADOLF. Yes. So much I didn’t know whether she was I or I she. Her smiles were my smiles, she cried, it was me crying. When she – can you imagine it? – when she gave birth to our child I felt the contractions in my body too.

GUSTAF. Adolf, I hate to say this, I really do. But I fear – you are showing the first signs of – never mind.

ADOLF. What? Signs of what?

GUSTAF. Oh, my dear friend – epilepsy.

ADOLF. No, that’s absurd – how can you tell?

GUSTAF. I saw it in a younger brother of mine. He indulged in – sexual excesses.

ADOLF. What were th...