Review: FREUD'S LAST SESSION
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Review: FREUD'S LAST SESSION
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
Mark St. Germain’s two character play, Freud’s Last Session, ran for two years Off-Broadway and has made the rounds of regional theatres, winning prize after prize. The Arden’s admirable production, directed by Ian Merrill Peakes, adds yet another debate drama about religion to the ever-lengthening roster so far this season. (Since the six showsI listed for my review of The Runner Stumbles, we can add two more.)
The debaters here are illustrious: Sigmund Freud (David Howey) and C.S. Lewis (Todd
Scofield). The subject is profound: the existence or non-existence of God. The moment is, well, momentous: the day England entered World War II.
And if the meeting between the psychoanalyst and the young writer (who would go on to write, among other books, The Chronicles of Narnia) is imaginary, the superb set (designed by David P. Gordon) looks thoroughly authentic. Anyone who has been to the Freud House in London knows how thrilling it is to see the famous couch, covered as it was, and as is at the Arden, by a Persian rug. The desktop, like the curio cabinets, is filled with the tiny, ancient figurines Freud collected, and phone rings often enough to give us a glimpse into Freud as tyrannical father to his already-eminent daughter Anna.
Freud is the more dramatic character—both by reputation and by situation, since he is dying and tormented by the pain of mouth cancer. Howey’s performance powerfully conveys a man who is suffering and who is trying to understand the point of suffering. Lewis believes that “suffering is God’s way to perfect us.”
Lewis, having parodied Freud in a recent book, seems, oddly, both unabashed by this embarrassment and unintimidated by meeting a man considered one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. Having recently found God through revelation, he argues against Freud’s assertion, “I have found a truth you can’t face: the end is the end.”
It’s all interesting, but not quite interesting enough; Scofield talks too slowly and deliberately—it sounds like a script rather than a heated conversation. And St. Germain’s dialogue makes it all diligently clear; I found myself thinking that these two guys were, surely, much, much smarter than this.
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Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd St. Through Dec.23. Tickets $36-48. Information: 215.922.1122 or www.ardentheatre.org
Toby Zinman's night job since 2006 is theater critic for the Inquirer. She also is a contributing writer for Variety and American Theatre magazine. Her day job: Prize-winning prof at UArts, author of four books about four playwrights (Rabe, McNally, Miller, Albee), and doer of scholarly deeds (winner of five NEH grants, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, visiting professor in China). Her 'weekend' job as a travel writer provides adventure: dogsledding in the Yukon, ziplining in Belize, walking coast-to-coast across England, and cowboying in the Australian Outback.
Wendy Rosenfield has written freelance features and theater reviews for The Inquirer since 2006. She was theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001, after which she enjoyed a five-year baby-raising sabbatical. She serves on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, was a participant in the Bennington Writer's Workshop, a 2008 NEA/USC Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater, and twice was guest critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region II National Critics Institute. She received her B.A. from Bennington College and her M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She also is a fiction writer, was proofreader to a swami, publications editor for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and spends all her free time working out and driving people places. Follow her on Twitter @WendyRosenfield.
Jim Rutter has reviewed theater for The Inquirer since September, 2011. Since 2006, he covered dance, theater and opera for the Broad Street Review, and has also written for many suburban newspapers, including The Main Line Times. In 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a Fellowship in Arts Journalism. Thames & Hudson released his updated and revised version of Ballet and Modern Dance in June, 2012. From 1998 to 2005, he taught philosophy and logic at Drexel, and then Widener University. He also coaches Olympic Weightlifting for Liberty Barbell, and has competed at the national level in that sport since 2001.
