Fellowship For The Performing Arts
www.FPATheatre.com

Presents

The Screwtape Letters
By C. S. Lewis
Adapted for the Stage by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean

At
The Mercury Theatre
(Mercury Theatre Website)
3745 N. Southport Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60613
773.325.1700

To February 15, 2009

President: Michael Cullen
Executive Producer: Sheila Heneghan

Screwtape: Max McLean
Toadpipe: Yvonne Gougelet

Director: Jeffrey Fiske
Scenic Design: Cameron Anderson
Costume Design: Michael Bevins
Toadpipe Movement & Make-Up Design: Karen E. Wight
Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau
Sound Design: Bart Fasbender
General Management: Aruba Productions
Ken Denison and Bill Castellino
Production Supervisor: Kelvin Productions
Vincent DeMarco
Production Stage Manager: Sara Gammage
Press Representative & Advertising: Noreen Heron and Associates,
Kate Hughes/Lianne Wiker

Susan Weinrebe
January 18, 2009

And how do you like your devils? Suave? Plumy-toned? Avuncular? The Screwtape Letters shows us the warmer, more “human” side of the devil, Screwtape, as he dictates letters of instruction to his demon-in-training nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape’s secretary, Toadpipe (wonderful names, these), scratches the transcriptions onto a tablet and dispatches the missives upward to Earth using a pneumatic tube system, the setting of the one-act play being, of course, Hell.

Perhaps more popularly known today for his commercially successful children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters in the bitingly satiric mode those familiar with Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary and especially, Mark Twain’s, Letters From The Earth, will relish. Thus, the notion is that Screwtape, ensconced in the depths of Hellish bureaucracy, must successfully guide his nephew through the intricacies of ensnaring a Christian soul known as “The Patient.”

The Chicago incarnation of the two-actor play is a tour-de-force of acting and presentation. Set on a stage so steeply raked that one had the sense of the actors being impelled downwards, and, amusingly, the audience itself was positioned in one of the lower regions, the dark edges appeared to fall off into nothingness. Murky background, a photographic projection of skulls, smoky miasma insinuating tendrils onto an easy chair, and a stool and a ladder made up the props. A cobblestone floor with trap doors allowed Toadpipe to extract and deposit writing stuff and knives and trident forks used to devour the flesh upon which the devils fed.

Max McLean, who co-adapted the material and played Screwtape, was as beguiling a devil as one could expect to ensnare a mortal into eternal damnation. His fulsome diction and posturing as the tutor and dandified demon in his richly embroidered smoking (get it?) jacket, personified all that is enticing about what is bad for you.

Toadpipe, though a wordless demon, expressed all that should be loathsome through pantomime, sounds, and limber movement. Yvonne Gougelet was enshrouded from head to toe in a costume and make up that allowed her athleticism and physical expression full range as she climbed, crouched, and scrabbled across the stage. Her ability to transform her body and face, during vignettes describing female beauty of different types, was riveting, as was her instant return as the persona of Toadpipe.

Though eternity is said to prevail in Hell, the ninety-minute performance flew by, provocative wit and sardonic innuendo being devilish delights for the thinking audience at The Screwtape Letters.

Yvonne Gougelet, as “Toadpipe”, Max McLean, as “Screwtape”
in "THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS"
Courtesy of Johnny Knight.

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Yvonne Gougelet, as “Toadpipe”, Max McLean, as “Screwtape”
in "THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS"
Courtesy of Johnny Knight.

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Max McLean, as “Screwtape
in "THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS"
Courtesy of Johnny Knight.

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Yvonne Gougelet as “Toadpipe”
in "THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS"
Courtesy of Johnny Knight.

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Chicago's Mercury Theater
Courtesy of Susan Weinrebe

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For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net