Archives for January 28, 2011

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review Palm Beach Dramaworks’ superb production of Freud’s Last Session. Here’s an excerpt.
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In the cash-strapped but quality-conscious world of regional theater, a smart small-cast show about a famous personage of the past is about as close as you can get to a sure thing. It stands to reason, then, that Palm Beach Dramaworks, whose slogan is “Theatre to Think About,” should have rushed to put “Freud’s Last Session,” Mark St. Germain’s two-man play about an imaginary meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, onto the tiny stage of its 84-seat theater. This show, which was originally developed in West Palm Beach, has since had highly successful runs Off Broadway, where it just reopened after a seven-week hiatus, and before that at Massachusetts’ Barrington Stage Company, where it received its official premiere two summers ago. Now that I’ve seen the Florida version, I know why: Mr. St. Germain has written one of the most stimulating plays of its kind to come my way.
In “Freud’s Last Session,” Professor Lewis (Christopher Oden), the bluff Oxford don turned Christian apologist, pays a visit to the office of Dr. Freud (Dennis Creaghan), the religion-hating inventor of psychoanalysis, who has fled to London to escape Nazi persecution. What ensues is a cross between an urbane conversation piece and a knock-down-drag-out debate over the existence of God. Such plays often lack dramatic momentum, but this one is tautened by its shrewdly calculated setting. The date is September 3, 1939. Not long after Lewis arrives, Freud switches on the radio to hear Neville Chamberlain announcing that a state of war exists between England and Germany–and the air-raid sirens start to wail….
This production, which has been lucidly staged by William Hayes, the company’s artistic director, is a good example of Palm Beach Dramaworks’ brainy approach. The acting is sharp, sympathetic and detailed. Mr. Creighan has been made up to look exactly like Freud, and Michael Amico’s set is a fabulously precise evocation of the Viennese doctor’s cluttered consulting room, right down to the shawl on his clients’ couch. Even the BBC broadcasts sound believable. Yet nothing that we see or hear onstage is allowed to shift our attention from the play itself, and the fact that no one in the theater is more than a few feet from the stage makes you feel as though you’re part of the conversation….
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Read the whole thing here.
The voice of Sigmund Freud, recorded by the BBC in 1938:

The voice of C.S. Lewis, recorded by the BBC in 1944:

“Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right.”
Mark Twain, undated memorandum