Based out of New York, the Fellowship for Performing Arts’s production of The Screwtape Letters has toured the country several times since 2010. This adapted drama, based on the novel of the same name by CS Lewis, moves main character Screwtape (a demon in upper management) out from behind his writing desk and gives him free range to chew scenery. Screwtape’s secretarial assistant, a gargoyle-esque creature named Toadpipe, takes dictation as his boss fumes and grouses missives directed at his incompetent nephew, a nepo-hire underling who’s failing to warp innocent souls on Earth to a satisfactory quota.
According to production director and company head Max McLean, Fellowship’s adaptation impeccably maintains the “genius of Lewis in the language of the play” by pulling 99 percent of the content directly from the pages of the novel. While the original Screwtape Letters was written in the 1940s, McLean calls the language “so universal that it’s not time-bound.” The main update for 21st-century audiences is de-emphasizing the situational backdrop of fighting the German enemy in WWII, opting instead for a more general concept of standing against terroristic forces — but the theme of spiritual warfare has not been modified.
The Fellowship for Performing Arts focuses on creating work that embodies Christian values while still finding overlapping cultural points with audiences of vast intellectual and religious diversity. “We spend a lot of time identifying and determining material that we think can accomplish that,” says McLean. The Screwtape Letters works well for Fellowship’s purposes, he says, because Lewis (a devout Christian and devoted teacher) is “a brilliant, influential writer, and even people who don’t share his world view can still appreciate his ideas.”
See this touring production of The Screwtape Letters at The Granada Theatre (1214 State St.) Saturday, October 4, 4 p.m. Tickets available at the Granada box office or online at ticketing.granadasb.org.
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