In 1938, shortly after the Nazis marched into Vienna, Sigmund Freud fled to England. He settled in the town of Hampstead, not far from Oxford University. The following year, when Freud was 83 and dying slowly and painfully from cancer of the mouth, he was visited by a young Oxford professor. The identity of the young professor is not known, but on the supposition that it was C.S. Lewis, then on the brink of becoming one of the leading Christian apologists of the 20th century, Mark St. Germain has constructed Freud’s Last Session–a mind-blowing and richly entertaining play currently running at Houston’s Alley Theatre.

For whatever reason we turn to fantasy, whether the genre’s commercial bubble--if it is, indeed, a bubble--"pops" within the next year or the next decade, society will most likely continue turning to stories of the inexplicable and marvelous regardless of the frequency with which new fantasy films are being produced. Because as long as there as there are fears to be solaced, through disillusionment with technology, politics, or otherwise, humans will probably always be a little quixotic, longing for a time in which something like the strangely beautiful, strangely gleaming iPod could simply be chalked up to good, old-fashioned magic.