Two by Strindberg

The Adams House Drama Society proved conclusively last night that Strindberg's The Creditors is a very unpleasant play. Those with a taste for the ghasty should unquestionably go, if only to see Diane Allen's fantastic performance as Tekla. Orchestra find the play sickening, but they cannot fail to be impressed.

The plot is simple. A woman's first husband comes upon his successor by chance. Finding him emotionally crippled by his wife, he destroys him--and destroys her in the process.

Perhaps the most admirable thing about the production is that director Richard Blau and his cast have faced all the problems of the play directly. Blau might easily have turned the play into a shocker, or a melodrama, but he has aimed instead for simplicity, letting the plot do the work.

The actors have worked for consistent characterizations instead of trying for startling effects. Although neither Gustav, the former husband (Marc Temin), nor Adolph (Henry Goldstein) is precisely defined at the first, by the end of the play I felt I knew them.

The key to the production's balance, I think, was Gustav. He manipulated Adolph so easily, the transparency of his ploys seemed vulgar. At first I was bothered by his voice--Temin has adopted what sounds like a Texas accent, and at times his are the tones of a small-time politician. But had he been more suave and mysterious, as Strindberg specialists may argue he should have been, the play might easily have seemed foolish. The ordinariness and obviousness are what makes the whole situation so sordid.

Goldstein played Adolph to fit Temin's interpretation perfectly. He was so serious, so dependent, so blind, that Gustav's control remained absolutely believable. He was pitiful, but never utterly ridiculous. And in his long speech to Tekla, he communicated his frustration so passionately as to show what a man he had once been.

Without Miss Allen, however, production would have been a bit flat, for Temin and Goldstein never build to any very intense moment. But as soon as Tekla enters, everything becomes clear: Adolf's anguish, Gustav's talk about guilt.

Tekla is a selfish woman who wants to have her way, to be flattered, to flirt, but never to admit that anything is her fault; a vulgar coquette who must be assured of her charm and virtue. Miss Allen is that exactly. She is infuriating. She radiates stupidity and sick sexuality She justifies every relationship, every line, in the play.

The set is necessarily limited, but thoroughly opressive, as it probably should be. Miss Allen's costume is superb.

Strindberg's short monologue The Stronger completes the double bill. The play turns on a question: who is the stronger, the silent Miss Y, who has had a long liaison with Mrs. X's husband, or Mrs. X, who still has her husband, her children and her home.

Director Stephen Most has considerably obscured this question, however, by a highly stylized interpretation. Amy Singewald, as Miss Y, moves like a sleepwalker, holds peculiar positions, and gazes out into the audience with large, vacant eyes. There is a hint that she is the weaker, but she seems to come from a world where that concept doesn't apply.

As played by Nancy Abuza, Mrs. X is also a bit stilted. But her nervousness does seem essentially human, and we do get a sense of a definite character.