Fellowship for Performing Arts presented The Screwtape Letters, a traveling production that puts the work of C.S. Lewis on stage, at The Granada Theatre. The Screwtape Letters is an epistolary novel featuring correspondences from C-suite demon Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, who is fresh on the job of tempting souls to Hell. Poor Wormwood, not a natural at the art of tempting as his uncle was, is botching his first assignment.
After each report from the bumbling Wormwood, Screwtape (played by Brent Harris) dictates his increasingly disgusted responses to his gargoyle assistant. Early letters offer advice and psychological insight into the human race, as Screwtape recommends strategies for keeping the “patient” on a selfish path toward damnation. As Wormwood’s reports continue to uphold their tone of failure, including news of his “patient’s” conversion to Christianity and marriage to a “good Christian woman,” Screwtape’s repugnance reaches new heights. Harris, while an entertaining performer, ramps up the character’s anger quickly; by the show’s halfway point, there is little room to build, as lines are already delivered with full rage.
Known for his Chronicles of Narnia fantasy-adventure series, Lewis was, beyond being a writer, both a devoted born-again Christian and a critic of the church. The Screwtape Letters offers embedded author commentary about how easy it is for people to be distracted from the “righteous” path. The production has a beautiful set with sharp, underworldly angles and lines, and design elements are high-quality. McLean and Fiske’s version of The Screwtape Letters is a sturdy adaptation of Lewis’s work — while the focus on reverse-psychology philosophizing is heavy-handed, the production is an interesting re-imagining of a story otherwise told through one-sided correspondence.
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