Give or take the Guardian’s Dining across the divide feature, who these days has forthright debates with their ideological opposites? That’s what playwright Mark St Germain orchestrates in his 2010 play imagining an encounter, on the eve of war, between arch-rationalist Sigmund Freud and born-again Christian CS Lewis. Spoiler alert: they do not settle the question of God’s existence. But the only thing more futile than having the conversation, argues Freud – and I found this point curiously touching – would be not having the conversation at all.
You have to invest, then, in the idea of civilised argument for argument’s sake – because that’s all you’re getting with Freud’s Last Session. Why would God allow such pain in the world, asks Freud, a question sharpened by arbitrary deaths in his family, and the terminal oral cancer whose effects are gruesomely enacted here. “God wants to perfect us through suffering,” ventures Lewis, who – under no obligation to be rational – has a nonsensical answer to everything.
