Mark St Germain’s play Freud’s Last Session, first seen Off-Broadway in 2010 and now receiving its European premiere at London’s King’s Head Theatre, pits two of the 20th-century greatest thinkers, Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis, to discuss life’s biggest questions, including “Does God exist?”
The two men never met in real life, but the play imagines a meeting between them at Freud’s Hampstead home, where he moved after fleeing Nazi Germany, in September 1939 on the eve of the Second World War and just days before Freud commits assisted suicide, succumbing to the long-suffered pain of oral cancer.
At 83, the world-renowned psychoanalyst is a lifelong atheist. His junior, at 40, is a born-again Christian, an Oxford University professor and author still to become internationally recognised himself as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Who will win the argument? Will either reconsider their views?
The two-hander, beautifully staged and performed, is a thought-provoking 85-minute debate, using many of Freud and Lewis’ own words from their extensive bibliographies and poignant personal revelations.
I started my Freud’s Last Session post-show discussion by asking the audience whether they believed in God, and ended by posing the same question to the panellists – director Peter Darney and the cast, Dr Julian Bird, the real-life psychiatrist turned actor who plays Sigmund Freud, and Sean Browne, who has done copious research on his character CS Lewis. In between, with the help of an impressively knowledgeable and well-read audience, we delved into much else on the subjects of psychiatry, religion and theatremaking.
Terri Paddock founded WhatsOnStage.com and the WhatsOnStage Awards, running the company and its events from 1996 to 2013. Terri is also the author of two novels, Come Clean and Beware the Dwarfs, and has previously written for the Evening Standard, Independent, The Times and other national publications. She is renowned for her 'legendary' post-show Q&As and also produces the annual Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and acts as a digital, content strategy and event consultant for theatre, producers and other clients. She tweets about theatre at @TerriPaddock.
