Eight years ago at La Jolla Playhouse, playwright Doug Wright workshopped a still-developing solo play that would go on to win both the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award as best play. But it took more than the Playhouse's fertile creative soil to lure the author of "I Am My Own Wife" back this fall. Artistic director Chris Ashley had a tasty carrot to dangle in front of his longtime friend as a lure.
"Chris knew I had a dormant ambition to direct, so he told me: 'Find a classic play that hasn't been done to death, give it a spiffy adaptation and you can direct it,' " Wright said about his Playhouse comeback vehicle, his world premiere adaptation of August Strindberg's dark, psychological drama "Creditors."
Strindberg wrote "Creditors" and "Miss Julie" in 1888. "Miss Julie" went on to become Strindberg's most famous work, but the Swedish playwright always considered the now-obscure "Creditors" his masterpiece. Set at a seaside resort, "Creditors" is a psychological thriller about three characters: An artist named Adolf, his wife, Tekla, and a mysterious stranger named Gustav, who first befriends Adolf and then slowly poisons Adolf's feelings toward his wife. Gustav, it turns out, is Tekla's first husband, and he is determined to enlighten Adolf about her before she can break his heart. But the truth about Gustav's and Tekla's motives may not be what they at first seem.
Strindberg is said to have based the play on his own bitter feelings toward an ex-wife, and the play has been criticized and dismissed over the years as overtly misogynist. Wright said he questions that assessment and he doesn't understand why the play has fallen from favor.
"I think it's a vital, terrifying, sexy and outrageous play about the havoc people play on each other in the name of love," said Wright, who lives in New York with his partner, singer/songwriter David Clement. "I've heard it called misogynist, but I think it's a round indictment of all three characters. I feel empathy for each character at different points in the play. My allegiance shifts from day to day."
To reassess and adapt the play from a fresh perspective, Wright went back to its source, commissioning Swedish translator Andrus Cato to make a direct translation of Strindberg's original text. Modernizing the text wasn't easy, Wright said, because "the play had a lot of bizarre Swedish idioms, like 'She has stolen your manhood and hidden it in the toe of her slipper.' It takes some effort to be faithful to Strindberg and still make it mean something to a modern audience."
The script unfolds in real time over 90 minutes, but short doesn't necessarily mean simple. Wright said the play is a challenge for its adapter.
"It's a very verbal play," he said. "The characters are savagely articulate and have a brisk intelligence. Strindberg was proud of the play's economy. There's a cat and mouse element to the script and you have to be careful not to reveal the game too soon."
Approaching the play as a director (something he hasn't done in a decade) has been a nice change for Wright, whose other writing credits include the plays "Quills," "Dinosaurs," "Watbanaland" and the books for the musicals "Grey Gardens," "Buzzsaw Berkeley" and "The Little Mermaid."
"Directing is very different because it's not my play," he said. "I'm less concerned with fixing the dramaturgical problems than I am about being true to Strindberg and revealing his mathematical agenda. Adapting is like walking along the beach in somebody else's footprints. It's challenging. but I'm learning a lot about craft as I go."
Wright said one of the most interesting part of working on "Creditors" has been learning more about the notoriously difficult and neurotic Strindberg and trying to understand both what drove him to write and how he invested himself in his work. Strindberg based most of his plays on his own life and feelings, and a main character in each play was usually his alter ego. Interestingly in "Creditors," Wright said the actors in the Playhouse production all feel that they are Strindberg's incarnation in one scene or another ---- even Kathryn Meisle, who plays Tekla (a character said to be modeled on Siri Von Essen, the first of Strindberg's three wives, and with whom he had a particularly bitter divorce).
"Strindberg was irascible, temperamental and wildly mean-spirited, but he was drawn to the women in his life," Wright said. "He wrote to stave off madness. I think he faced each day with the question, 'Will I go mad or will I write a few pages today?' He chose to write, which I see as terribly heroic."
"Creditors" is the first of two commissions Wright is working on for the Playhouse. Next up is "Hands On a Hard Body," an adaptation of a 1997 documentary about an endurance contest held in Longview, Texas, where the person who could keep their hand on a new car the longest would win it (the winner lasted 77 hours). Wright and Amanda Green (lyricist for "High Fidelity") will adapt the film into a musical that Wright said he hopes to debut at the Playhouse within three years.
Wright has a long association with the Playhouse, as well as with Ashley, who was his classmate at Yale decades ago, and who directed his first two plays in New York. Wright said he likes bringing new work to La Jolla because audiences here are so receptive.
"It's a wonderful place to develop new work," he said. "It's a smart audience, so you can test your work here in an honest way."
"Creditors"
When: Opens Tuesday and runs through Oct. 25; showtimes, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; 7 p.m. Sundays
Where: Potiker Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse complex, UC San Diego, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla
Tickets: $30-$65
Info: 858-550-1010
Web: lajollaplayhouse.com.
