A Brief Review

As G. K. Chesterton said, "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing badly." I went to see Screwtape performed by Max McLean on Saturday afternoon at the Cutler Majestic.  I am "pro" because I  affirm efforts to make use of whatever mediums (not the spirit kind, but the art kind) to further illustrate, communicate, and help us meditate on spiritual realities. Thus efforts to help us wake up to the noumenal world in a materialistically biased, post enlightenment culture (still heavily influenced by modernism) is welcome. Even those who believe strongly in the devil are easily deceived about deception. So again any efforts to help guide us through Lewis's material imagined from behind enemy lines, anything "from the inside"*, anything that helps us to see better what the devils believe and tremble at is to be encouraged and applauded. Too long Christians have been alienated from the gifts of art. I encourage everyone to go and support McClean's work and effort, though I would like to offer below constructive feedback, which is what follows below. 

Nevertheless, the success of these attempts should also be judged and measured by the work's ability to capture the imagination and mind of the audience and thereby communicate the underlying realities. The performance was weak for the following reasons. Max McLean's voice dominates the performance-- and demands a lot of aural attention. While I greatly appreciate McLean's voice and his gracious efforts by which he has also brought the New Testament to life (available online) and serves as lector at Redeemer in NYC, his voice, all its familiar rhythms and patterns, is almost too familiar and hard to pay attention to. Following the "story" demands that the majority of attention be on McClean's voice. Secondly the visual aids are strong, like an ant is strong. All the burden is carried by two actors, McLean monologuizing as Screwtape and either Beckly Andrews or Tamala Bakkensen as Toadpipe, his hissing assistant instructed by the cries of Gollum. In other words, I felt a little bit cheated and wonder if I could have gotten more out of reading the book out loud to myself. Couldn't there have been a wall with actors on the other side showing what's going on in the "phenomenal world"? The offices and officers of Hell are kept at a distance from the real world, and thus so are we.

The power of the literary work is that it consists mainly of illustrations from the real world-- hardly illustrated in the play, very hard since only two must do it. One of the two looks like the cousin of Venom (from Spiderman), but often the representation of the humans falls on the nasty insect. (How should we portray demons? I think there's a lot of freedom from the beautiful, strong, and appealing to the hideous and goblin like.) It seems to me that the goal of presenting the Screwtape Letters through medium of performance is to illustrate the work in four dimensions, to help those who love it understand it better, to help those who wouldn't really have gotten as much from an attempt to read the book come to grasp Lewis's ideas and identify with them existentially. 

I'm looking forward to the upcoming performance of the Great Divorce. I only hope that they make more use of actors and the stage. 

 P.S. I had a great time, not least because we were near Chinatown and went the Taiwan Cafe where I slurped down several blocks of stinky tofu rejected by my classmates who courageously gave it a taste. The word cow patty came up. 

*The asterisk: I thought I needed to qualify "from the inside" since I don't want any one to share correspondence from the inside. On the other hand, humans really have first hand knowledge of the inside. As Chesterton said (whose Biography I am reading and whom I cannot stop quoting), "I am not proud of knowing the Devil...I made his acquaintance by my own fault." And also "I dug quite low enough to discover the devil; and even in some dim way to recognize the devil."

*The "aster"-risk reminds also of the protection we have through the host of heaven .