SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
Freud's Last Session
This hit play will continue its life, and move to New World Stages on October 7th where it will have another official re-opening night (Oct. 16th) and settle in for an open run. The two-hander, which won the 2011 Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play is also slated to have additional productions in major markets across the nation and around the world —including London, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Mexico City, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Palm Beach. To read Deirdre Donovan's interview with the two actors who have been with the show since its beginning go here.
|
|
Your writings are always thought provoking. When I was a student in University we devoured every book to discover our latest perversions. — Lewis I hope you found them. — Freud |
The cast, under the continuing direction of Tyler Marchant, remains intact and perhaps is seen and heard in even sharper relief than previously reported by CurtainUp critic/editor Elyse Sommer (Original Review ). Martin Rayner is splendid as resolutely irreligious Freud whose worsening health finds him considering suicide. Mark H. Dold is equally on target as C. S. Lewis, the irrefutably smug yet impassionedly committed convert to Catholicism, famed as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. The audience seemed as engrossed as I at the clever way that Marchant has presided over this wittily and compassionately dramatized clash of personalities and ideologies.
Even if one goes to this play with a pre-conceived notion about which or whose side you are on, St. Germain presents the conditions and issues of their disputation on a very level playing field. As characterized, we could argue that Freud at 83 years old, seriously ill and ill-tempered is the more enviably mature practitioner of his convictions, and that Lewis, a former atheist and a war veteran, has somehow embraced religiosity less as a sublimely invoked revelation than as a form of familial rebellion. But even these observations become less fixed and more abstracted during the ensuing discourse.
While crediting The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. as a jumping off point, St. Germain offers an honest consideration of these commendably argumentative two men through their point-counterpoint debating. There are glimmers that even they are also unwittingly drawn to concede, although not in so many words, that the existence of God can not and probably never will be validated either by a metaphysical supposition or by a scientific hypothesis. The result of this is that everybody leaves believing exactly what they believed at the start, or not.
The play is set in Freud's London apartment where he now resides with his wife Martha and daughter Anna. It is 1939 and the Freuds have narrowly escaping Hitler's invasion and the occupation of Austria. Anna has caringly furnished his study to effectively duplicate the one he had in Vienna. This, of course, is the fine work of set designer Brian Prather who creates the carefully detailed environment that includes not only the obligatory desk and chairs, but also a great wall of books, a day-bed that may serve both doctor and patient and some oriental rugs. Not to be overlooked is Freud's collection of mythological figures and artifacts that curiously become a point for discussion.
Freud is critically ill with cancer. He listens apprehensively to the BBC broadcasts that bring increasingly dire reports of Hitler's movements and of England's inevitable response. The radio reports, a terrifying air raid during which they struggle to put on their gas masks, as well as a couple of telephone calls during Lewis's visit provide the only digressions from their talking. For a talky play there is nothing static about the dialogue or the behavior of these two highly opinionated characters. It is certainly amusing to listen to the challenges they make, each inflexible, each armed with his own arsenal of questions and answers.
That there is no loss of momentum during the play's 75 minutes in real time is a laudable accomplishment. The play's most unexpected turn has Lewis suddenly having to help Freud cope with a life-threatening emergency. Intractably analytical and yet amusingly conversational, Freud's Last Session, nevertheless, offers more than brainy talk; it offers bracing theater.
|
Freud's Last Session By Mark St. Germain Suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. Directed by Tyler Marchant Cast: Martin Rayner (Sigmund Freud), Mark H. Dold (C.S. Lewis) Set Design: Brian Prather Costume Design: Mark Mariani Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor Sound Design: Beth Lake Running time: 75 minutes Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 West 64th Street (at Central Park West) (212) 866 – 811 – 4111 Performances: Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8 PM, with matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. Tickets ($65) A limited number of $20 Student Rush tickets (with valid ID) will be available at the box office beginning three hours prior to each performance. Previews from 07/09/10 Opened 07/22/10 Closing 11/28/10-- to make way for another booking but will re-open 1/14/11. Closing at the Marjorie Dean 10/02/11 and moving to New World Stages n W. 50th Street"" Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 07/20/10 |
|
Click on the address link E-mail: esommer@curtainup.com Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email. . .also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. You can also contact us at Curtainup at Facebook , Curtainup at Twitter and at our Blog Annex . . . Curtain Up Blog Annex at Kindle |
|
Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations. To subscribe,
E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. |
South Pacific
In the Heights
Playbill Broadway Yearbook
