Double pleasure of Strindberg

The chess-board proves a striking metaphor in these two tautly constructed plays, where human relationships are seen as a series of moves and counter-moves, leading to a dramatically satisfactory "check-mate". In both Creditors and Pariah, it is possible to see Strindberg grope towards the Nietzschean concept of the Superman in his depiction of the inevitably male "winner", even though detractors might find descriptions like "chauvinist" and "patronising know-it-all" more appropriate.

Leading Strindberg scholar and translator Michael Meyer died only 10 days before rehearsals, and so could not see the British premiere of his translation of the little-known Pariah. The play is cruder than Strindberg's better-known Creditors, but director Jacob Murray has made an inspired decision in staging them together, since Pariah contains the seeds of ideas which come to full fruition in the latter - a thinly dramatisation account of the breakdown of Strindberg's marriage.

For Pariah, imagine a sparse 19th century science-laboratory: a table bearing a microscope, some exquisite old-fashioned bottles, and a small wooden chest. Mr X, played with dusty assertiveness by Lawrence Werber, is a scientist who once killed a man by accident - but escaped imprisonment. John Ogilvie is the ambiguously meek Mr Y, who has suffered two years of humiliation behind bars for forgery - and the result is an uncannily Hitchcock-like argument about morality and intellectual superiority.

The intelligent and nuanced acting carries off Strindberg's sometimes lumpy attempts to plot the rhetorical moves. Creditors - which he favoured above Miss Julie - has more emotional weight, and a gritty dynamic, inspired, no doubt, by his hatred of the parasitical female-figure sparring emotionally with a present and former husband, who both claim to have "created" her. Murray's excellent casting and intelligent rigour makes this an involving if flawed double-bill. Strindberg and Meyer's ghosts will be happy.

Creditors and Pariah