About The Screwtape Letters

PERFORMANCES BEGIN IN NYC ON APRIL 15

New York – THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS is a smart, provocative and wickedly funny theatrical adaptation of the C.S. Lewis novel about spiritual warfare from a demon’s point of view. 

It was a hit at Chicago’s Mercury Theatre where it ran for six months and at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. where it played for ten sold out weeks.  Last fall it embarked on a national tour delighting capacity audiences in San Francisco, Phoenix, Louisville, Chattanooga, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston and Austin.

The play follows the clever scheming a high level demon employs to entice a human toward damnation. In this inverted moral universe set in an office in hell, God is called the “Enemy” and the devil is referred to as “Our Father below.”  The stakes are high as human souls are the demon's primary source of food.

As His Abysmal Sublimity Screwtape, Max McLean, the 2009 recipient of Chicago’s Jeff Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, creates a “master of the universe” character, all too familiar to New Yorkers, whose rhetorical flourishes mesmerize while he allures. 

At his feet is the creature-demon, Toadpipe, played by Karen Eleanor Wight, who recieved the 2008 DC Theatre Scene Award for Best Female Actor.  Toadpipe transforms into the paragons of vice Screwtape conjures with a flick of his fingers.  The actors’ combined skills wheedle their unsuspecting soul down the “soft, gentle path to Hell.”

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS is still one Lewis’ most influential works, along with such other classics as The Chronicles of Narnia (including The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe), The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity.  The book’s success as a piercing insight into humanity’s bent toward evil is due to Lewis’ lucid ability to make his readers squirm in self recognition.  When first published in 1942 it brought immediate fame to this little-known Oxford don including the cover of Time Magazine. 

Lewis dedicated the work to his close friend J. R. R. Tolkien who had expressed to Lewis that delving too deeply into the craft of evil would have consequences. Lewis admitted as much when he wrote: “Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment . . . though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded.”

Scenic design is by Cameron Anderson, costumes are by Michael Bevins, lighting by Jesse Klug, and sound is by John Gromada.

For times and tickets go to tickets page.