Creditors
Othello for Septuagenarians
Creditors
by August Strindberg adapted by Howard Brenton
OT Productions at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 11th October
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Strindberg has a reputation for making his audiences suffer while his characters tear one another apart in a desperate desire to destroy each other. He may have a reputation for misogyny, but it is perhaps more accurate to suggest that he hates humanity regardless of sex and gender. Miss Julie, his most famous play, is so harrowingly nasty that I don’t know I could ever bear to see it again. Creditors by contrast is unexpectedly funny and prompts a good deal of laughter in Howard Brenton’s witty and vivid translation. (‘The guilt doesn’t go away: your creditors will always get you in the end’.) These characters are older and tougher than in Miss Julie: harder to wound, with less to live for, which lowers the emotional stakes.
That said, this cast – all in their seventies – are probably at least twenty years older than Strindberg envisaged. This acknowledgement of the sexual activity of older generations is wonderfully refreshing, especially an era when we are told that seventy is the new fifty. The references to the dangers to health of sex make a lot more sense when played by older actors who have more than enough glamour and charisma to make their attractiveness plausible.
It begins with two men talking in a late 19th Century lakeside hotel during one of those glorious summers when everyone is wearing elegant white linen (gorgeous costumes and discreetly appropriate set from Louie Whitemore). Adolf is sharing his marital insecurities, while his wife Tekla is away, with Gustaf, a fellow guest at the hotel, who is revealed as increasingly manipulative and Iago-esque. This is succeeded by two further dialogues: Tekla and Adolf, followed by Gustaf and Tekla.
The elegance of the play’s construction makes it seem more like Marivaux than Ibsen, with lots of artificially implausible eavesdropping, and an abundance of game playing – even the antagonists don’t seem entirely certain when they are teasing and when they are deadly serious. I am not sure that I believe in these paranoia powered robots, although this superb cast does a marvellous job of giving them the appearance of life. Nicholas Farrell’s Adolf is vulnerable and in declining health, but more than capable of lashing out; Charles Dance’s Gustaf is elegantly menacing, his delivery as crisp and immaculate as his wardrobe; Geraldine James’s Tekla is fabulously glamorous, but addicted to admiration and doesn’t really know her own mind.
Tom Littler’s immaculate production dates from 2019 when it was performed at the Theatre by the Lake, but is well worth revival in a concentrated ninety minutes with no interval. Even so, it has – unsurprisingly – sold out before it opened. The Orange Tree is a marvellous theatre with a wonderful feeling of intimacy in the round and, as this show illustrates, seems to be on something of a roll at the moment.
Patrick Shorrock, September 2025
Photography by Ellie Kurttz
Mark Aspen 