Freud's Last Session

Hurray for off-Broadway! Seriously.
Last night I rushed a ticket at literally the very last minute to Freud's Last Session at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theatre on W 64th. I had left my number with the box office just in case there was a cancellation, and at 7:45 (fifteen minutes before curtain) they called to say I was in. Luckily I was in the neighborhood-ish. I had gone on a lazy stroll through Central Park, which was breathtaking yesterday evening, and had to hurry over to Central Park West as soon as they called. The scurry was completely worth it, though.
If you haven't heard, the show takes place on September 3, 1939 (the day of the king's speech) in the eighty-three year old Dr. Sigmund Freud's office where he is entertaining a theological debate with a pre-Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis. The events of the play, written by Mark St. Germain, are almost completely fabricated, and are based simply on Freud's journal entry on that date stating that a young Oxford Theologian had come for a visit. Lewis and Freud spend the next hour and a half in lively discussion regarding the existence of God. The opposing views are so fundamentally different and communicated so thoroughly and intelligently that the talk itself is riveting. Add the possibility that the U.K. could be bombed at any moment, and Freud, who died a few weeks after this date, has a painful and debilitating oral cancer, you have one exciting as well as provocative play.
I was able to meet both Martin Rayner (Sigmund Freud) and Mark H. Dold (C.S. Lewis) after the play during a talk back, and I told them personally how much I had loved their work. They've been performing the play for a year now, and they say that each night is still a new discovery, fresh and different. They're both truly impressive.