“C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters”
Raising Canes River Center
Baton Rouge
March 14
If the Devil made you do it, how did he get to you?
In C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” Lewis imagines the scenario from the point of view of two devils. The book is a series of letters from an elder devil, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood instructing and advising him about how to tempt “The Patient,” who is a human considering Christianity.
“C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters,” a theater adaptation of this book is a touring production by the Fellowship for Performing Arts directed by Max McLean. The production played at the River Center on Saturday.
Like the book, the play documents The Patient’s conversion to Christianity in tandem with Screwtape’s descent into madness and frustration over it. The whole play is from the tempter’s perspective and exists in the framework of an imagined hell. The performance at the River Center was followed up by a Q&A-style discussion hosted by someone from the production company intimately familiar with both the life of Lewis, the original book “The Screwtape Letters,” and the play.
As a fan of the source material, I was slightly nervous about how an epistolary work of literature would translate onto the stage. Is it just a monologue in which one person is writing letters? Screwtape as played by Gregory Allen Jackson is engaging, and he does well with the material (though 90 minutes of monologue under the same conceit may be just a little too long regardless of who is playing the part). But the unexpected backbone of the show is really the character of Toadpipe played by Tamala Bakkensen.
In this reimagining of the story, Toadpipe is transformed into faithful Screwtape’s scribe for every letter. This two-hander is a back and forth between Screwtape dictating the letters and Toadpipe -– dressed more similarly to how one might imagine a devil — doing a mix of writing them down, embodying the different kinds of characters Screwtape is describing, and giving the audience insight into the culture of hell through their interactions.
The character, as portrayed by Bakkensen, has no verbal lines, but the performance speaks volumes. Whether she’s climbing on the ladder out of hell to deliver letters, embodying the different kinds of women the tempters have set people up with throughout the ages, or puking at the thought of love, Toadpipe gives life to the show and adds comic relief. Bakkensen is crawling on furniture, rolling on the ground, snarling. Her commitment to the part draws the audience in. The play doesn’t work without Toadpipe, and the audiences in Baton Rouge got a great performance.
“The Screwtape Letters” have long fascinated Christians because of the insight it provides into the world of temptation and the mechanisms that keep people in lukewarm faith. At least judging by the laughter and audience reactions, an overwhelming number of the people in the theater Saturday were Christian, and in the talkback after the show, most said they’d read “The Screwtape Letters.”
The play is clever in the way it updates Lewis’ writing without changing the words through stage directions. When Screwtape talks about the distractions to put into The Patient’s life, he mimes watching TV and doomscrolling. Though the play doesn’t include the weirder parts of the book (Screwtape does not turn into a giant centipede out of rage, unfortunately), the adaptation manages to condense 31 letters from the book into a digestible and beautifully sound designed production.
An actual non-metaphorical hell and role of devils/tempters is a construct most people only buy into if they’re already Christian. If you don’t believe in the Christian God, it’s unlikely you believe in the worldview which involves tempters luring you away from said deity. But the play is insightful for the way it communicates how change happens within one’s life. Devils or not, there are little choices and influences we let become part of our routines without much thought but mold us into the people we are becoming. “C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters,” gives audiences a lot to think about.
