FREUD'S LAST SESSION

FREUD’S LAST SESSION, a new play by Mark St. Germain, will have its Off-Broadway premiere at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater.  Performances will begin July 9th, following a second return engagement at Barrington Stage Company (MA), where the play had its world premiere in June 2009.  FREUD’S LAST SESSION stars Mark H. Dold as C.S. Lewis and Martin Rayner as Sigmund Freud, under the direction of Tyler Marchant.  The official opening night is set for Thursday, July 22nd.

"Over 5,000 patrons have attended Freud's Last Session, making it the most popular play in BSC history," said Barrington Stage Artistic Director Julianne Boyd. "It has been a joy to produce such a provocative and entertaining work, especially one that has been embraced by audiences and critics alike."

Suggested by the bestselling book The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr., FREUD’S LAST SESSION centers on legendary psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud, who invites the young, rising academic star C.S. Lewis to his home in London.  Lewis, expecting to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, soon realizes Freud has a much more significant agenda.  On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex, and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chooses to take his own.  

Playwright Mark St. Germain was intrigued by an account of Sigmund Freud's meeting with an unnamed Oxford don shortly before Freud committed suicide in 1939 to end his battle with oral cancer.  In FREUD’S LAST SESSION, the psychoanalyst's visitor is C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters.  Freud, a staunch atheist, grills Lewis, a former atheist who converted to Christianity, about his views on God and more personal matters.

FREUD’S LAST SESSION is being presented Off-Broadway by Carolyn Rossi Copeland, Robert Stillman and Jack Thomas.