take on the demonic underworld is experiencing a revival of sorts in
theaters across the country. Based on The Screwtape Letters—the
1942 fiction work that elevated the Oxford University professor to
celebrity status—Screwtape on Stage features the talents of
Max McLean, who portrays the demon Screwtape teaching the novice
tempter, Wormwood, by means of letter writing.
Adapted
and directed by Jeff Fiske and Max McLean, the
presentation from the classic novel by Lewis—also author of “The
Chronicles of Narnia” and Mere
Christianity—has
sold out in multiple cities and was performed more than 300 times at
New York City’s West Side Theatre. Told from the senior demon’s
point of view, the play features McLean corresponding with Wormwood,
a demon in training learning to tempt his “patient” on Earth. God
is known as “the enemy” and Satan as “our Father below.”
Douglas Gresham, Lewis’
stepson and the executor of his estate, approved
the show’s script and called it “a breathtaking performance.”
The
Wall Street Journal
called it “wickedly witty,” and The
New York Times
said: “The devil has rarely been given his due more perceptively
and eruditely.”
When published, the book
brought Lewis considerable media attention, leading to three years of
BBC radio talks, and five years later he graced the cover of Time
magazine. Screwtape on Stage remains true to Lewis’
spiritual warfare classic with “97-98 percent” of what was on
stage directly from the book, said McLean, adding that Lewis’
purpose was to “expose the darkness.”
Screwtape is accompanied
on stage by Toadpipe, a grotesque character who acts as his assistant
by taking dictation and delivering Screwtape’s letters by way of
something that looks like a bank delivery tube ascending to earth.
Played by either Tamala Bakkensen or Beckley Andrews, Toadpipe
skillfully assumes various postures or characters in response to
Screwtape’s dictation.
Screwtape wears a fanciful red jacket throughout most of the show, though at
the end he dons a more military-style jacket and white gloves. In his
dictation, he covers topics such as pride, “the painful subject of
prayer,” church-going, courtship and fashion, and speaks of the
failure of hell’s intelligence department to “find out what he
[God] is up to.”
With few props, the set
has a backdrop of skulls and bones, the designer having visited and
been inspired by the Catacombs, McLean said to his Orlando, Fla.,
audience in a post-show Q-and-A session. Music plays a role, too, once
with pop star Madonna’s “Material Girl” among the tunes heard
in the background.
Just as the Scriptures
refer to Satan as a prowling lion seeking to devour, “human souls
are the nourishment for demons in hell; we’re part of their food
chain,” McLean said. But when Wormwood’s “patient” opts to
follow Christ, Screwtape prepares, alternatively, to consume his
novice demon.
Asked in the
after-session about his ability to memorize 90 minutes of material,
McLean said he learned it “one line at a time,” noting that is
the “minimal requirement for the [actor’s] job” He has also
performed the Gospel of Mark and Genesis live on stage.
As president and
artistic director of Fellowship for the Performing Arts, McLean aims
to produce theater from a Christian worldview that engages a diverse
audience, believing that “the canon of Christian literature has
been relatively unexplored.” The Fellowship is also planning a
performance adapted from Lewis’ The
Great Divorce.
For more information on Screwtape, visit ScrewtapeOnStage.com.
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