If a single man and a married woman fall in love, do they owe their happiness to her (soon to be ex-) husband? August Strindberg thinks so, and titled his 1889 one-act play Creditors. “Sooner or later, he’ll show up to collect the debt,” says Gustav (Liev Schreiber), the aforementioned husband, in Jen Silverman’s very loose adaptation, now onstage at the Minetta Lane Theatre and produced by Audible x Together.
Second husband Adolph (Justice Smith), here called Adi, perhaps to emphasize his immaturity, doesn’t even realize that Gustav has come to collect. He simply believes he’s been chatting and throwing back drinks for a few nights with a fellow hotel guest. The poor fellow is so naive that he doesn’t notice his mind is being poisoned by this Iago-esque stranger, nor does he see that said stranger—who wants to talk incessantly about Adi’s wife, Tekla (Maggie Siff)—is, in fact, Tekla’s first husband. The audience, however, knows almost immediately.
Adi, a painter, is struggling careerwise, and, not surprisingly, finds himself jealous of literary rising star Tekla. “She wrote one book! One! All it took was five weeks of writing about her miserable marriage and she’s the new voice of—whatever they’re calling her—emotional vivisection, whatever,” he rants to Gustav, the main character in Tekla’s smash-success roman à clef. So Gustav appeals to Adi’s ego, building him up by complimenting his art—“his grasp of space, his muscularity of shape, his dignity of color.” Then, slowly and methodically, he tears Adi down, brick by brick, calling Adi “sensitive,” obliquely referring to his wife as a parasite, and implying that she’ll discard him just as she did her first husband.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
“You’re still young, so maybe you haven’t realized this yet. But no relationship is a relationship of equals,” Gustav explains, zeroing in on Adi’s vulnerability. “We’re humans—what we’re drawn toward is power and weakness, not equality. Some of us long to wield power, some of us long to serve the powerful.”
What’s most terrifying about Schreiber’s performance is his restraint. How can a man be so intimidating while sitting down, rolling a cigarette? He never raises his voice, but his words land like body blows.
Adi describes Tekla as “larger than life,” and Siff—whose seven seasons on Showtime’s Billions likely limited her time on New York stages—lives up to the billing. Thankfully, Silverman has given Tekla more agency. One striking example: When Adi makes a husband-defining demand for respect, Tekla bristles. “The way men talk about respect as it concerns women, I mean—I don’t respect anybody in a way that makes me sort of have to erase myself, or…get smaller. I never have.”
There’s other change in this Creditors, which is running in rep with Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes: Silverman has altered the ending; let’s just say it’s less lethal, but still psychologically devastating. We’d expect nothing less from a Strindberg adaptation.
Creditors opened May 18, 2025, at the Minetta Lane Theater and runs through June 18. Tickets and information: audiblexminetta.com
