Anna Chancellor can’t catch a break in CREDITORS (photo by Hugo Glendinning)
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. at Rockwell Pl.
Through May 16 (April 22 performance reviewed)
Tuesday – Sunday, $25-$75
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in David Grieg’s searing adaptation of August Strindberg’s CREDITORS, running at BAM through May 16. The Donmar Warehouse production, wonderfully directed by Alan Rickman, had a hugely successful run in London in the fall of 2008 and arrives at the Harvey Theater with the original cast intact: Tom Burke stars as Adolph, a deeply troubled painter and sculptor losing faith in his art and his life while suffering from a mysterious debilitating illness that requires him to use crutches; Anna Chancellor plays his flirtatious wife, Tekla, a successful novelist who is gallivanting around town while Adolph has remained in their island vacation villa; and Owen Teale is Gustav, a well-spoken stranger whose carefully chosen words first help then confuse Adolph.
Gustav (Owen Teale) shakes up Adolph (Tom Burke) in August Strindberg’s CREDITORS (photo by Stephanie Berger)
The ninety-minute show is divided into three sections, each one involving two of the characters dissecting one another as well as the offstage person, all taking place in Adolph and Tekla’s bright hotel room, designed by Ben Stones. At one point Gustav tells Adolph that he is performing an autopsy of the human soul, and that’s precisely what Strindberg has done with the play, his final naturalistic work prior to INFERNO CRISIS and his shift into expressionism. CREDITORS is a brutal and unrelenting carving up of the psyche, a skewering of the complex relationships that grow out of love, sex, and marriage. The exceptional acting is led by Burke, who won the Ian Charleson Award in England for his original portrayal of the poor, pathetic Adolph, the centerpiece of this too-rarely-performed, extremely dark comedy that will force audiences to contemplate their own relationships. The April 27 performance will be preceded by an Artist Talk with Rickman, moderated by Patrick Healy ($10).