The Screwtape Letters

CS Lewis was a writer with strong Christian values who infused his work with religious morals. But rather than sermonising, he used clever analogy, literary devices and even inverted logic to delicately deliver his message. The Screwtape Letters is written as a correspondence between the demon, Screwtape, and his aspiring nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape is mentoring Wormwood in the ways of temptation, but through Screwtape’s flawed arguments and Wormwood’s failure to corrupt a human, Lewis surreptitiously presents his apologist case for Christian ideals.

It’s not the kind of text that screams “put me on stage!” and yet actor Yannick Lawry and his business partner, Hailey McQueen, owners of Clock And Spiel Productions, have successfully done just that.

McQueen wrote the adaptation, making only minor edits to the original text and bringing one of the characters, Toadpipe (only alluded to in the letters) on stage to interact with Screwtape.

“George Zhao [Toadpipe] is a master of physical theatre,” says Lawry. That together with inventive production and stage elements help galvanise the script into a full theatre experience.

As for the play’s appeal for a wider audience, Lawry says it addresses some universal ideas:

“It basically takes those concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, turns them on their head and gets you questioning…whether it’s possible that outside our human understanding, there may be other people pulling strings.”

He also quotes a Screwtape comment that could easily be applied today: “It’s easy for humans to become so distracted that they spend hours of an evening not socialising but staring at a dead fire in a cold room.”

With regard to playing a character like Screwtape, Lawry admits he had to swerve around clichés: “The temptation is either to make him kind of a bit camp and ridiculous… or to make him just horribly evil, which again goes into parody, so I try to just play him as myself.”

And he is chillingly convincing. (RB)

Nov 22–Dec 10, Tue-Sat 7.30pm, Sat 2pm. Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, City Rd, Chippendale. $39-$45. Tickets & info: www.seymourcentre.com or www.screwtapeshow.com.au

BY RITA BRATOVICH