TinFish Productions dishes out some of the most diverse theatrical fare in Chicago, ranging from Aeschylus to Handke, from new works to Neil Simon. In one season, the still-young company fearlessly assays plays of more divergent styles and national origins than most troupes touch in twice the time. The key is style: TinFish rarely produces mainstream contemporary realism, preferring instead works of high literary merit from the international repertory, demanding a grasp of theatrical style of many periods. That TinFish cannot always master the required style—as is the case this time around—does not diminish the ambition of their efforts, for neither audiences nor artists grow if they do not challenge themselves.
Screwtape is an adaptation by British poet/painter/playwright James Forsyth of The Screwtape Letters, one of the best-known works of fiction by medieval scholar and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. The play concerns the efforts of apprentice devil Wormwood to damn the soul of a callow young architect. Think Clarence, the Guardian Angel, in reverse. Wormwood is advised by two senior devils, his Uncle Screwtape and a “Whatever Lola Wants” type seductress name Slumtrimpet. By play’s end, Wormwood has turned human, like Og the leprechaun in Finian’s Rainbow. Screwtape is (pardon the pun) fiendishly difficult. It moves swiftly (except for Act I, scene 3 which bogs down in dialectics), but nonetheless is long (three acts) and carries the challenge of two intense literary styles: the witty Christian philosophy of Lewis and the heightened prose of Forsyth, a key post-WWII verse dramatist (along with Eliot and Fry).
The play is an intellectual comedy in the manner of Shaw more than anything else. Half the characters must be sincere, and the other half wry; and the wry ones should be worldly. Under director Laurie Anne Kladis, sincere works pretty well but wry goes awry. Much too often, the players are petulant rather than witty, substituting volume for intensity of feeling. Given the brick-walled acoustics, and British accents all over the map (Stephen Shaw’s working-class Mortar is the best), the shouting becomes unintelligible. Equally damaging, the story loses focus. Screwtape is Wormwood’s story, for he is the character who is transformed. But this production allows the architect to become the center of audience sympathies.
Screwtap is not the kind of work to be mastered in the typical, short Off-Loop rehearsal period. This production could harness its undeniable energy and vigor to better purpose if Kladis has the inclination to rethink the focus and put in some additional rehearsal time.