Freud’s Last Session

Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis are pretty significant names in history, so a play centring on them coming up against each other with their differing views on God, love, sex and the meaning of life is something theatre lovers should relish. 

Freud’s Last Session won Best New Off-Broadway Play in 2011 after it ran for a record two years, and now it’s Brisbane’s turn to be treated to the work which has also had dream runs in Sydney, Chicago and Los Angeles. 

Playing at QPAC’s Cremorne Theatre from 26 November to 7 December, the play was written by Mark St. Germain after he was inspired by Dr. Armand S. Nicholi Jr’s 2003 book, The Question of God. Freud and Lewis apparently never met in real life, but Nicholi taught a course at Harvard putting their philosophies side by side in the form of a ‘debate’ – Freud, the atheist psychoanalyst and Lewis, the Christian who went on to write the Narnia series and many books on Christianity. 

St. Germain’s fictional version is set on the day England joins WWII and just weeks before the elderly Freud took his own life with the help of a doctor because of his inoperable cancer. The renowned psychoanalyst invites young, little-known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in London. There the two of them engage in dramatic and humorous debates about the big questions of life, their impressive intellects going head to head. 

Directed by Adam Cook, Freud’s Last Session features William Zappa (ABC’s Paper Giants) as Freud and Andrew Henry (All My Sons, Frankenstein) as Lewis and is presented by Strange Duck Productions.

Book here

by Vicki Englund