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Fun with Vermeer

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 8th October 2008

Girl with a Pearl Earring
Theatre Royal Haymarket

Waste
Almeida

Creditors
Donmar

The Donmar’s latest production, Creditors by Strindberg, is a painfully honest and superbly staged study of marital jealousy. Adolph and Tekla have returned to the lakeside hotel where they first began an adulterous affair. Their weird, intense marriage has killed off Adolph’s artistic talent, crippled him physically and left him permanently paranoid about his voracious toyboy-tempting wife. Gustav, a friendly local doctor, offers helpful advice but seems determined to undermine Adolph and quash the remnants of his marriage. Their dialogue is as saltily phrased as a Jacobean tragedy. ‘The capillary power of her vacuity,’ says Gustav, ‘has entirely sucked out your brains.’

Anna Chancellor is heart-catchingly believable as the ageing nymphomaniac beauty and her handsome waif-life husband Adolph is excellently portrayed by Tom Burke. One might object that Owen Teale over-emphasises the stagey dastardliness of Gustav, an effect Strindberg can’t have intended, but the result is so brilliantly funny as to silence complaint. Ben Stones’s stylish whitewashed set provides the perfect foil for this thrilling show, and the direction by Alan Rickman is all but flawless. Don’t assume it’s sold out. Try a matinée.

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