“There was nothing here to challenge me but enough to entertain.“
Con Nats
3 Leather Couches
In 1939, an Oxford Don visited Sigmund Freud, which playwright, Mark St Germain imagined was CS Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis was a ‘Christian apologist’ (as “They have a lot to apologise for”) and Freud invited him for over for a cuppa and a chat.
Lewis (Matthew Goode) had just published a book proclaiming the strength of Christianity. Freud (Anthony Hopkins) had done radio programs rejecting religion, so you can guess what the main topic of conversation was.
However, this script (co-written by St Germain and director Matthew Brown) goes wider and deeper into the lives of our protagonists. Lewis was a young soldier in WWI and fell for the mother of his best friend who died by his side. Freud was overly dependent on his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), in a stifling and almost unnatural way.
The verbal jousting between two top actors in Hopkins and Goode are a joy to watch. They manage to show respect and disrespect in a way that is missing in modern discourse. I don’t how long Hopkins will keep acting for, but he seems to keep getting better and better, although he seems to go his own way.
One disappointment is Hopkin’s reluctance to put on a German accent. His ‘Ja’s’ almost sound like ‘Ye-has’, and his odd German utterances show no effort.
The other is the script. This verbal jousting doesn’t go deep into their religious views. It’s more like gentle teasing and banter between friends, rather than an intellectual debate over religion. St Germain and Brown break any intensity with flashbacks, an air raid, more flashbacks and interruptions to avoid this becoming anchored in one location and to avoid looking like a converted play. But it breaks the flow and shows a lack of confidence in the material.
It’s the acting that carry this script. Hopkins and Goode are brilliant. Liv Lisa Fries, as Anna Freud, is excellent as her character shows enough depth and contradiction to make her worthy of her own story. (She wrote her first paper on sado masochism and became a leader in child psychology.) And Jodi Balfour as Dorothy, Anna’s lover, is very good.
The script reveals more about the two men and Anna Freud than an argument about Christianity. Sigmund was in pain from oral cancer and addicted to morphine. Lewis was an ardent Christian, potentially living ‘in sin’ with an older woman. They are both flawed, human and very intelligent. I found this aspect more interesting and informative than their religious views. There was nothing here to challenge me but enough to entertain.
Con Nats, On The Screen
