Max McLean as Screwtape onstage. Coming to Cleveland! Three shows only!
That's what listeners to Cleveland Public Radio (90.3 WCPN) have been hearing now for several weeks. An original stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters rolls into town this week, and the promos have been describing it as "hilarious" and "devilishly funny".
Those descriptions caught me a little off guard -- this is C.S. Lewis, right? Just how funny could it be? So I decided to give a listen to Blackstone Audio's unabridged recording of this short work, first published in print in 1942.
The stage show by all reports is quite true to the original, which is written as a series of 31 letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a junior "tempter," serving in a gigantic Satanic bureaucracy. The elder devil (undersecretary of an entire department) offers advice and criticism to his young relative, who is engaged in the task of corrupting the soul of an Englishman referred to by Screwtape only as "the patient".
There is considerable dry humor in the depiction of humanity's temptation by evil as a project strategically managed by a vast hierarchical apparatus that speaks in corporate and governmental jargon. But clearly Lewis was focused on serious business and intended his work as a commentary on humility and pride and as an examination of the banality of evil. Central to Screwtape's tutelage of his nephew is the notion that bringing souls to the devil is actually rather easy work.
The bureaucratic metaphor is apt. Lewis wrote in an age when bureaucracy was exploding -- in democracies every bit as much as in the worlds of fascism and communism. And, it must be admitted, Christianity has always been replete with its own imagery of lives weighed in the balance, books of account, and strict judgment.
Lewis was also writing at a time when the world was convulsed by a global war that demanded consideration of good and evil. The wartime mentality is present throughout the book -- via direct reference as well as in the sense of struggle between Screwtape and his associates with the inexplicably loving force to whom they refer as "the enemy".
I can scarcely think of a better reader for this project than veteran British narrator Ralph Cosham. In Cosham's hands, the work is humorous, but he doesn't read it for laughs. Rather, he plays it entirely straight and lets the material do the work, rendering it completely accessible for anyone interested in engaging Lewis' ideas -- whether from the perspective of a Christian believer or merely as someone interested in serious reflection on the meaning of a life well lived.
The laughs in the stage show are supplied in large part by the mute antics of Elise Girardin, the only performer on stage other than the show's star and co-creator, Max McLean, who, as Screwtape, holds forth rather more theatrically than does Cosham. You can listen to McLean online as he discusses this production with Dee Perry of Cleveland public radio.
For more about the theatrical adaptation of Screwtape and its current four-city tour, visit the Fellowship for the Performing Arts website.
Whether or not it's coming to a stage near you, the original is well worth listening to. Each of Screwtape's letters is about five minutes long as read by Cosham -- the perfect length for consumption and reflection in small doses.
The Blackstone audio edtion also includes a 30-minute reading of Lewis' essay "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," completed shortly before Lewis' death in 1963.
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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta
