Acclaimed stage actor and director Max McLean is returning to Chicago this month with a production of The Screwtape Letters, one of C.S. Lewis’s most enduring works of Christian literature. The play will run September 13–14 at the Athenaeum Center on Southport, presented by McLean’s Fellowship for Performing Arts.
Speaking with Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer, McLean described the story as a “predator-prey” tale told through the correspondence of a senior demon, Screwtape, mentoring his nephew Wormwood on the art of temptation. Rather than relying on sensational depictions of evil, Lewis frames spiritual warfare as the sum of small, daily choices that draw people closer to heaven or hell. McLean emphasized that this theme resonates across cultures and beliefs, capturing what Pope Benedict once described as the devil’s tendency to appear as a “false good.”
McLean founded Fellowship for Performing Arts in New York to create theater and film from a Christian worldview, aiming to engage audiences of diverse backgrounds. His body of work includes adaptations of Lewis’s The Great Divorce and The Most Reluctant Convert, which was also adapted into a feature film. He said Lewis’s blend of intellectual rigor and spiritual imagination continues to inspire productions that appeal well beyond church audiences.
Asked about the enduring cultural relevance of Lewis, McLean noted that even works often dismissed as “children’s literature” like The Chronicles of Narnia carry deep theological insight. His own path to bringing Lewis to the stage was shaped by a conversion experience early in his career, which drew him to London’s theater scene and sparked a vision of integrating faith with dramatic art.
Looking ahead, McLean revealed that Fellowship for Performing Arts has secured worldwide rights to adapt The Screwtape Letters into a film. While the stage version remains close to Lewis’s original text, he suggested the film may incorporate a contemporary setting to bring its themes of temptation and spiritual struggle into modern life.
Tickets for the Chicago performances are available through the Athenaeum Center, with audiences promised the kind of thoughtful and visually striking production that has made McLean’s Lewis adaptations popular worldwide.