Martin Rayner, actor

Here is a blog about actor Martin Rayner, who recently starred as a dying Sigmund Freud in the Off-Broadway production of Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain.  Rayner collapsed on stage a few nights before the end of the run, at which point it became public that he has been battling cancer during the process of the play.

I was lucky enough to get to see one of the preview performances of the play during the 2010 Christians in Theatre Arts symposium in New York, and found both Rayner and his co-star Mark H. Dold to be excellent in their ability to capture the essence of the struggles and personality of their characters without succumbing to simple imitations of the historical figures.  The play supposes a conversation in 1939 between Freud only weeks before his death and a young C. S. Lewis, after his conversion but before the bulk of the writing for which he is most known today.