The poster for “Creditors” has Alan Rickman’s name in big letters. But you won’t find Rickman, that suave screen villain, on stage: The actor directed this relatively rare August Strindberg play, brought to BAM from London’s Donmar Warehouse.
You won’t miss his presence, though, because he did a bang-up job behind the scenes. And the actors we do get are spellbinding.
Focused on the triangle between two men and a woman, “Creditors” (1888) is a vicious, unsparing illustration of the writer’s neuroses and genius. But it’s also an overheated melodrama that mixes Nietzschean survival-of-the-fittest philosophy with a twist like that in an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Devoid of a proper plot, the play is built on three scenes, each between two characters. As in “The Dance of Death,” Strindberg reduces the war of the sexes to its essence: the struggle to determine who’s on top.
It’s a nasty fight, full of thrusts, parries and counterattacks, and it takes place on constantly shifting ground.
The first dialogue is between Gustav (Owen Teale) and Adolph (Tom Burke), a young artist frustrated by his marriage to the older, domineering Tekla (Anna Chancellor). Gustav tells Adolph he can regain the upper hand by “exercising complete sexual abstinence” — implying that Tekla is a succubus stealing her husband’s manhood.
But Adolph isn’t all that defenseless when Tekla turns up. In fact, it’s hard to tell who’s the alpha spouse in this marriage. He’s a ninny who’s mastered the art of aggressive submission, while she taunts him even when held at knife-point.
It’s simplistic to call Strindberg a misogynist. He is both attracted and terrified by female sexuality — symbolized here by Adolph’s sculpture of a naked woman, aggressively thrusting up her breasts and pelvis. “I want her, but I’m scared of her,” he says of his wife.
In the final confrontation, between Gustav and Tekla, the tone switches from near-hysterical to dangerously mellow. You suddenly realize you’ve been witnessing an ongoing chess game that mixes long-calculated moves and last-minute gambits.
The queen, of course, is the most desired piece — and the most dangerous.