Desultory review: "The Screwtape Letters" live

I wasn't entirely thrilled with the adaptation of "The Screwtape Letters," partly because the format's a bit limiting—Screwtape gets a letter, he responds to it, his scuttling secretary sends the response, lather rinse repeat—and partly because I quibbled with bits of the production. On balance, though, it was a great if chilly way to spend an evening (the Lansburgh was so cold that the ushers offered blankets; never have I been so glad to have large seatmates).

The set was fantastic: a wedge of distorted tile flooring, a comfortable easy chair and ottoman, and a serpentine ladder leading up into the flies, with a black safe-like mailbox hanging next to it. As the lights changed throughout the production, the back wall gradually became visible, allowing the audience to see that it was tiled like a catacomb's, skulls and the stacked ridges of femurs poking out to echo the tiling of the study's floor. Slowly morbid and creepifyin, nicely done.

Screwtape was impressive; the actor basically carries the dialogue (monologue?) for 90 minutes with very little break. They had an actress in a funky body suit acting as Toadpipe and periodically stepping in to illustrate Screwtape's points (the fierce catwalk she did when Screwtape talked about fashion skewing toward an unrealistically boyish body got the biggest laugh of the night), but I really regretted the director's choice to have her gibber wordlessly at the audience; it seemed like reaching too hard for a laugh. To my immense disappointment, they didn't do the part of the books where Screwtape, in a fit of irritation at his nephew's incompetence, turns into a giant bug. Probably for the best, especially considering that by the end of the night the poor actor was sweating copiously anyway. The first few rows also got the benefit of his plosives. Ick.

The death of Wormwood's patient was done very effectively: a flash of sharp white light, a rumbling noise of walls falling, and then, dead clear, the sound of a single piper playing "Amazing Grace." Dammit, Scotsmen, that's such a cliched piece. So how come every single time it's played I start to sniffle?