The Screwtape Letters

Screwtape (Yannick Lawry) is a Senior Devil, a bureaucrat responsible for the administration of junior devils’ mission to turn human souls away from ‘The Enemy’ (God – the Christian One) and land them safely in Hell.  But he seems to spend all of his time on replying to letters from his incompetent devil nephew, Wormwood, with forceful (here, very forceful) advice on how to capture the soul of his human target, known as ‘the Patient’.  His secretary cum manservant, Toadpipe (George Zhao), serves tea, fetches slippers, retrieves Wormwood’s letters and takes down Screwtape’s dictated replies.

C S Lewis’ much loved book was first published in 1942.  It’s been in print ever since.  There have been several adaptations by various people over the years.  In one bold iteration, audiences even got to see Wormwood and the Patient.  Director Hailey McQueen, however, has done her own adaptation – and it’s as if she doesn’t really trust C S Lewis’ material per se not to bore the pants off the audience.  She makes Toadpipe a sort of grumpy, hunchback, Mel Brooks ‘Igor’, and gives him a lot of comic, often slapstick, business.  Mr Zhao does indeed do this very well and, even if it’s quite irrelevant, it does provide little entre acts, so to speak, and some relief from rather one note Mr Lawry and the letters.  The letters are also divided by bursts of rather merry Klezmer-like music – pleasant enough but not too fitting - from Adam Jones.  Most innovative (if that’s the word) of all, Ms McQueen also entrusts Mr Zhao to play, as well as Toadpipe, the Patient and the Patient’s crone-like Mama – and to assist Screwtape in lecturing the audience on the devilish philosophy and psychological insights intended to assist Wormwood in his task of gaining the soul of the Patient.  These demanding tasks Mr Zhao does not do so well, his vocal skills not being on the same level as his physical ones.

Mr Lawry as Screwtape looks suitably saturnine, but for some reason, designer Isabella Andronos has put him in a sort of Tom Ford (i.e. too small) white suit and pointed patent leather shoes.  As I remember the original text, the tone is suave, sly, ironic and pithy.  Mr Lawry unfortunately jettisons much of this.  There is not much light and shade, or clear articulation of what are, in fact, quite complex ideas about human behaviour.  Mr Lawry is either briskly fruity and rather smug, or he rants loudly.  His exasperation with his nephew accelerates much too fast; it all gets a bit wearing and the audience becomes grateful for Mr Zhao’s next comic turn.  

Whenever one of Wormwood’s letters arrives, it is accompanied – for some reason – by sounds of distant explosions and falling masonry.  Similarly, whenever Toadpipe sends a letter – by throwing it offstage – we hear another explosion.  Why?  These arbitrary jokes wear even thinner with repetition.  And that is, unfortunately, symptomatic of this version of The Screwtape Letters.  The attempts to liven up an ironic sermon leave the elements fighting each other.

When one reads C S Lewis’ book, what one gets, of course – or all one gets – are Screwtape’s letters.  Apart from the fact that they come from a senior devil in Hell, any other context is up to you.  You imagine he does other things besides write these letters and you suppose he has somewhere to write them, but you don’t think about it.  It doesn’t really do to delve too deeply into other arrangements down there.  (For instance, if Wormwood is Screwtape’s nephew, does Screwtape have a sister or brother devil somewhere?  What are conjugal and marital relations in Hell?)   Such matters are not the point.  Nor will I delve at all into the theological assumptions of the piece.  The point is that the enduringly popular Screwtape Letters is a tract – oh-so-skilfully disguised by irony, wit and sharp insight – about what prevents frail humans from committing themselves to Christ – as C S Lewis absolutely assumes they should. 

The catch with any theatrical adaptation – unless an actor simply reads the letters to the audience – is that Screwtape gets a face, a costume and a setting.  In this adaptation, with its sort of fusty Victoriana set, which Screwtape and Toadpipe never leave, a curious and quite likely inadvertent effect is to give the impression that they are trapped in this one room, in which each gets on the other’s nerves, for all eternity.  (Shades of Sartre’s L’Enfer.)  If this were the case, it might go some way to explain Screwtape’s angry ranting and a bored Toadpipe’s shenanigans.  Might.  But I fear not intended.

Some of the sold-out opening night audience laughed occasionally – and encouragingly – at Toadpipe’s antics, but mostly sat silent through this one hour and twenty minute (it felt much longer) lecture.  It is clearly a professional and well resourced production in which, however, the problems of an intractable (pun intended) adaptation have been confronted but far from solved.

Michael Brindley  

Photographer: John Leung