The Screwtape Letter On Stage

NICK EICHER, HOST: You’re listening to the Thanksgiving Weekend edition of The World and Everything in It. I’m Nick Eicher.

The widely acclaimed stage production The Screwtape Letters returned to New York last week, as part of its national tour.

It’s a theatrical adaptation of a 1942 satire. Author C.S. Lewis conceived of this persuasive, eloquent demon when two summers earlier he heard a speech broadcast in London by Adolf Hitler. That provoked the idea at the heart of The Screwtape Letters…a literary work just as fresh and relevant today as it was 70 years ago.

My co-host Joseph Slife prepared this report.

SOUND: LAUGH

JOSEPH SLIFE, REPORTER: That fiendish laugh belongs to one of the key devils in the demonic “low command,” Screwtape — as portrayed on stage by actor Max McLean. McLean’s theatrical production of The Screwtape Letters enjoyed more than 300 performances in New York in 2010, and it’s currently on tour across the U.S.

In a series of letters to his nephew Wormwood, Screwtape details various satanic strategies Wormwood can employ to turn his human subject away from “the enemy.” The enemy, in this case, is God.

The best strategies, Screwtape says, are the subtle ones.

MAX MCLEAN AS SCREWTAPE: Like all young attempters, you're anxious to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember Wormwood, all that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the enemy. It does not matter how small a sin, provided that the cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light. Murder is no better than cards. If cards can do the trick, indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one. The gentle slope, soft underfoot, without milestones or sign posts.

After a performance of The Screwtape Letters last summer, he told me that — as C-S Lewis demonstrated — literature and the arts can be effective tools for reaching certain types of people with gospel.

MAX MCLEAN: He was probably the most effective Christian apologist evangelist of the 20th century, for a certain kind of person, an academic, an artistic person, that has those kinds of interests. Lewis speaks to that. He has a very powerful dialectic when he talks about the Christian faith, but he also has a powerful imagination. And then the theater with the theater does is it, it takes something and it puts a magnifying glass on it, and really makes it bigger. And I think that the impact is great.

MAX MCLEAN AS SCREWTAPE: We must face the fact that all this talk about His love, is not mere propaganda but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loads of little replicas of Himself. Creatures whose life in their miniature scale are qualitatively like His own. Not because He's absorbed them, but because their wills freely conformed to His. We want cattle that can finally become food. He wants servants that can finally become sons.

Although The Screwtape Letters has two characters on stage, Screwtape his demonic assistant Toadpipe, Max McLean has all the spoken parts. Most of the wording is taken directly from Lewis.

McLean has done extended-monologue performances before, with one-man stage presentations of The Book of Genesis and the Gospel According to Mark. He told me the idea of performing Screwtape on stage arrived in an email.

MAX MCLEAN: It came to me, you know, somebody thought saw me do Genesis and wrote me an email and said, "I think you'd make a really good Screwtape." I don't know if that was compliment or not. But I said, "Well, if we can get the rights, let's have a go of it." And that's, that's how it started. 

JOSEPH ON TAPE: As an actor describe the challenge of this particular role? 

MAX MCLEAN: Well, I think the language is the key. Screwtape has to be a master of the universe type character, he has to be supremely confident, that has to come across the audience and the audience has to like it. You know, he's really good at his job. That's key. If you don't get that, if the audience feels like they can't believe that he is capable of doing the things he says he's doing, the show for part. So that the confidence that Screwtape has, and the ability to execute the language that Lewis wrote, which is incredibly difficult language, is the key to making Screwtape believable.

MAX MCLEAN AS SCREWTAPE: Yes, they do regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good, because we have taught them to do so. Do not be infected by our own propaganda.

The Screwtape Letters is often humorous – but it’s also chilling at times, such as when Screwtape and Toadpipe grow feverish with devilish delight over the idea of perverting what God has created for human happiness and turning into the means of human destruction.

MAX MCLEAN AS SCREWTAPE: Never forget that when we're dealing with any pleasure and it's normal, satisfying form, we are on the enemy's own ground. I know we've won many so through pleasures, but it's His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures. All our research thus far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is encourage the humans to use the pleasures in ways and degrees He has forbidden, so always try to work the pleasure towards that which is least natural, therefore least pleasurable, and ever increasing craving, or never diminishing pleasure is the formula. It's more certain. It's better style to get the man's soul. This is what really gladdens our fathers heart.

The Screwtape Letters succeeds as both entertainment and edification – a tribute to both Max McLean and the genius of C.S. Lewis’s book.

For Christians who happen to the in the audience, McLean hopes seeing Screwtape brought to life will prompt them to be more on their guard about what the Bible calls the “wiles of the devil.”

MAX MCLEAN: We don't spend a lot of time talking about spiritual warfare, or the power of evil one, and I think that our Christian life would be more...we would we would be more alert, I would say, to virtue, to grace, if we recognize that somebody is really get to get us. That would bring us more to the cross, more to Christ.

Next weekend, The Screwtape Letters is in Boston. Then it’s on to Washington, D-C, for 12 performances.

Other cities lined up for the months ahead are listed at ScrewtapeOnStage.com.

MAX MCLEAN: Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape. 

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