The Screwtape Letters Play

The Screwtape Letters Play – View full size Max McLean as Screwtape and Elise Girardin as Toadpipe in the adaptation of “The Screwtape Letters” which opens at PlayhouseSquare’s Ohio Theater Friday night and plays twice more on Saturday.

‘s mini-masterpiece, bring you to the Ohio Theater today for an introduction to one of the most satirical plays ever created.

The Screwtape Letters Play

“Screwtape Letters,” as the title implies, is an epistolary novel consisting of a series of missives from an old witch named Screwtape to his son, Wormwood, teaching the junior tempter how to be good. most captures the soul of his “patient” and therefore. thwart the “enemy,” or God.

Stage Adaptation Of C.s. Lewis’ ‘the Screwtape Letters’ Comes To The Morrison Center Saturday

From this simple pleasure, Lewis creates an apologetic for Christianity. But it is the Lewis style of Christianity – mental, ecumenical, compassionate. Only Christians who scare the bejeezus out of the intolerant, rigid and hateful.

So – because there are many lights of the church, and of those who are proud in their humility, and those who have faith they understand something infinite as the Ideas of God – “Screwtape Papers” appeal to all. .

Max McLean, a New York-based actor and songwriter, gave a great voice and a beautiful face and intelligence to Screwtape, using only a giant skull and femurs , and a small office, a triangle in hell to represent Satan’s invective and enemy. capacity for love and forgiveness.

As big and expressive as McLean is in this role, this is not a devil’s show. He can be helped by the slithery Elise Girardin as Toadpipe, Screwtape’s servant, and many people that Screwtape conjures in his letters.

The Screwtape Letters

Even if you have read Lewis, this tight, fast-paced, 75-minute adaptation, which opens on Friday night, will give you a new understanding of the text thanks to McLean’s clear narration and incredible reading. The articles are rarely scary, or funny, or informative.

Note to readers: if you buy something from one of our affiliate links we will make a profit. for the junior devil is too much and noisy drama.

His big question is whether CS Lewis’s 1940s writings, written from senior to junior devil, are suitable for the stage. You can create a play out of an epistolary exchange, but Lewis complicates it by giving only one side of the writing. As if to overpay, this American adaptation, adapted by Max McLean and Jeffrey Fiske and produced and directed by McLean, is too much drama and too bad.

The letters give Lewis an opportunity to provide a description of how to endure the temptations of the modern world. In teaching his nephew how to win the party spirit, the self-important Screwtape uses every possible means. He writes about the power of mundane materialism, the petty snobberies of religious beliefs, the temptation of novelty, the insidiousness of pride. This is the reverse of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus with his vision of the great trial. Lewis, in one of his best quotes, suggests that “the safest road to hell is a gentle one – a gentle slope, a soft bottom, no instant change, no priority, no sign.”

The Screwtape Letters Billets

How do you put all this on stage? It would be amazing to have an actor read the script. This version goes to the opposite extreme. McLean, a large, bearded figure in a brocade smoking jacket, bestrides the stage like a Victorian actor-director. He spoke to a private secretary, faithful to Karen Eleanor Wight in the deception of the devil, who wrote angry letters and sent letters by wire. For good measure, there’s a history of death’s head and episodes of thunder and lightning. It was all too much.

The key to Lewis’s letters is in their irony and their role reversal that “Our Father Underneath” becomes a symbol of respect. But there aren’t many areas of subtlety in McLean’s performance. It colors every line. He vomited ostentatiously at the word “pray”. When he talks about “all this is about love”, he feels like being asked to swallow poisoned meat. At other times, he smites the palm of his fist to emphasize a point.

McLean certainly creates an intimidating image. But it is an expression of the creation of the bludgeoning approach that, when Screwtape invokes the use of sexual fantasy to create exquisite unhappiness, he rams home his point by holding a pictorial biography of Madonna.

Given our theater’s refusal to fight religion, there is room for a version of The Screwtape. There were also moments when the power of Lewis’ words was felt. When Screwtape, referring to God and the devil said, “We are empty and will be full, He is full and overflowing” the attack against the house. But, for the most part, the sinews of Lewis’s thoughts are obscured by the flesh of theatrical rhetoric. I find myself wanting more simplicity, honesty and faith in the power of the word. From left, Brett Harris as Screwtape holds court in the seductive “The Screwtape Letters,” being playing at New York’s Acorn Theatre. FPA

Theater Review: Lively Comic Melodrama ‘the Rivals’ Opens At Apt

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share on Reddit Share on Flipboard Share on Email Comments

The holiday season can make everyone feel bad, and this season even the devil’s followers are not immune. In

, a dramatic adaptation by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean, of the CS Lewis epistolary novel of the same name, Screwtape, a middle- to high-level manager in the operations department for the Tempters Training College, exchange complaints with his “grandson Wormwood. , ” a recent graduate and seemingly risky. (Things are not always as they seem.)

Wormwood is charged with seducing someone we know only as “the patient,” who doesn’t know that Beelzebub has a demon placed on him. (Go figure.) The sick man has a loving wife, but he is on the verge of losing the “enemy”—God help him if he dares to speak of God by name.—as he is subject to the sins of the flesh, which. Of course it’s the worst kind.

Christian Performance Group Brings ‘screwtape’ To The Saenger In New Orleans

At first, everything looks good for Wormwood – not good for the patient: From his office in the depths of hell, Screwtape guides Wormwood in his mission. Souls are to the Devil what blood is to Dracula or brains in a zombie or half truth to a politician. Newly established souls are the blood of the devil’s life. And Screwtape didn’t get to where he is without being more than a little obsessive about the subject.

People don’t go straight to hell at one’s will or at one’s request. He works hard. Oh, they might have a challenge or two. But life (or after life as it is) of hell and damnation takes some cultivating, a lot of it. And Wormwood was a neophyte. He needed help, a lot. He often makes mistakes, and occasionally, is Screwtape.

Although this sounds like it could be preachy, it makes for a fun evening. Screwtape, as played by Brent Harris, is deliciously evil. I’d love to see Screwtape lock horns with George Bernard Shaw’s Mendoza (in the “Don Juan in Hell” episode

. Screwtape was joined by Toadpipe the lowly monster-Friday, clearly not the one who got his horns, and he was covered in something that looked like fur and had claws the size of a convenience store to hand Toadpipe played by Tamala Bakkensen, who, while fulfilling his main role, manages many emotions-all evil-without words, only a guttural voice that I imagine only Gollum or some the less Igors can interpret correctly.

The Screwtape Letters’: From Hell To The Ohio Theatre

The threat of the spirit returns to Cameron Anderson’s very eerie light, which is a skeleton, literally: Hundreds of bones and skulls of lost souls in the background. And all of it is just a little off, a cross between Doctor Seuss and Shirley Jackson’s Hill House. And it features pneumatic tube transmission that looks old and futuristic.

If for a moment it really gets you to root for the devil. A good bad guy will do it for you. And while we appreciate the patient’s final decision, the effect it has on Screwtape (and Toadpipe) evokes mixed feelings.

Finally, while this is a serious game in mind, there are plenty of fun moments. Harris and Bakkensen describe evil with charm and charm – and haven’t we been warned that the devil is charming? , even the New York audience jaded into temptation, and sent them into evil. Then things will turn for the worst for them – and for everyone who is the best.

Is currently playing at New York’s Acorn Theatre, after which it will tour. For more information, go to FPAtheatre.com.Brent Harris is Screwtape and Marissa Molnar plays Toadpipe in the play “The Screwtape Letters,” playing Saturday, Jan. 26, at the BJCC. (Photo by Scott Suchman)

Radio Theatre: The Screwtape Letters (digital Audio Download)

Another one of him