August Strindberg’s Creditors gets a powerful revival on the ATA stage

Creditors is a Swedish play written by August Strindberg in 1888, and its 19^th century settings and sensibility are remarkably brought to 2024 in this gripping production. Taking place entirely in the parlor of a seaside hotel, the beautifully dressed stage is an ironic venue for a harrowing display of human tragedy, despair, and deceit.

Dustin Pazar is heartbreaking as the worn-down, depressed artist Adolph. Walking with a cane, he limps across the room looking for a way out of a life in shambles, his voice ever breaking as he rages and laments. Though he longs for his yet-to-arrive wife, novelist Nina (an astonishing Amanda Stamm), he has been symbolically castrated by her. She calls him “little brother,” and waves her dalliances with other men right in its face. “My wife has a very independent nature,” he says in what proves to be the understatement of the century.

The first sequence is a dialogue between Adolph and his new “friend” Gustav, while Nina is still enroute to the hotel. Jake Minter gives a mesmerizing performance as the sinister, near-Satanic Gustav, manipulator of events and catalyst for the emotional breakdown of both Adolph and Nina. Gustav has been subtly interfering in Adolph’s life, even down to convincing him to sculpt rather than paint. (Adolph has been working sporadically on a miniature sculpture of a woman but has tellingly been unable to add a face to it.) Their main discussion is about Nina, touching on her previous marriage. As it transpires, we see Adolph come to the realization that he is desperately unhappy; and that his marriage, to use the modern vernacular, is toxic. “Do you like when she stays out late at night?” Gustav challenges him. “I’m going to talk to her. Things will change,” says Adolph, his tone and body language making it all-too clear that they never will.

Over the course of this discussion the truth behind Gustav’s own previous relationship with Nina becomes evident. He goes to eavesdrop from the next room as Nina finally arrives. The end-of-his-rope Adolph see-saws between attacking his wife for her behavior towards him and obeying her orders submissively. He storms out and Gustav returns to re-seduce Nina, even using his tie to ironically blindfold her in what is both sexual foreplay and a symbol of her ignorance to his cruel intentions. Before long she too in a state of despair, thus completing Gustav’s revenge plot. Such is the power of Gustav’s traumatizing words and actions that our tragic couple is left sprawled on the floor, lost, and convulsed in wrenching sobs.  The actors portray this descent into utter despair with mesmerizing deftness that echoes through the audience’s minds long after the stage lights have gone out.

Creditors is directed by Sean Szak Prasso. It runs at the Sargent Theater at the American Theatre of Actors through March 17.

Photos by Sean Szak Prasso
Cast: Dustin Pazar dons the full Beard; Jake Minter in Moustache; Amanda Stamm