Thursday, August 29, 2013

Ready for a Bus Ride to Heaven?


Climb on board as some of [C. S.] Lewis' most provocative and fiercely funny characters take a day trip from Hell to Paradise. Heaven awaits them . . . but will they like it?
Next month Max McLean and the Fellowship for the Performing Arts (FPA) open a stage production of C. S. Lewis' intriguing novel The Great Divorce in New York City. Tickets are now on sale.

The FPA is known for high quality imaginative theatrical productions. Their stage version of The Screwtape Letters played in Portland this June.

Here's a bit from the FPA on their production of The Great Divorce:
Ready for a bus ride to Heaven?

Fellowship For the Performing Arts—producers of the nationwide smash hit play THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS—invites you to take a celestial journey in the highly anticipated theatrical adaptation of C.S. Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE.

Climb on board as some of Lewis' most provocative and fiercely funny characters take a day trip from Hell to Paradise. Heaven awaits them . . . but will they like it?

"This is Lewis at his imaginative best," said Max McLean, FPA artistic director. "In THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, Lewis gives a 'demon's eye view' of the world below. But with THE GREAT DIVORCE, he explores a heavenly landscape of angels and spirits."

On the bus ride are characters drawn with Lewis' trademark wit and piercing understanding of human nature. This collection of self-satisfied day trippers includes a belligerent bully who only wants his rights, an old woman who can't stop grumbling long enough to question whether she has anything to grumble about, a bishop too "wise" to actually believe, and a famous artist more focused on his reputation than his art.

As celestial spirits welcome each of these ghosts—often someone they knew on Earth—THE GREAT DIVORCE brings to vivid clarity the gulf fixed between Heaven and Hell—the "divorce" of the title.

"There are only two kinds of people in the end," Lewis writes, "those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"

Will the ghosts stay? Or will they go back?

Get on board and take the journey—a trip that leaves no one unchanged.

4 comments:

MAX Redline said...

That should be interesting. Almost enough to cause me to visit downtown Portland, when it eventually plays here.

T. D. said...

I'm eager to see it too, Max. I made the rare (for me) trek downtown to see Screwtape Letters and found it both riveting and funny.

MAX Redline said...

I missed Screwtape - and wish I hadn't.

T. D. said...

Max, I only went because a friend alerted me it was playing. Otherwise I would have missed it too.

The good news is that they are going to keep Screwtape on the road and add Great Divorce. So, hopefully, the next time Screwtape comes to Portland you'll be able to see it. I'm planning to go again and take two family members who missed it in June.