Shadowlands at The Guthrie Theater on 11/9/08

By: David de Young

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Simon Jones as Lewis and James A. Stephens as Warnie in Shadowlands - Photo by Michal Daniel

“The pain now, is part of the happiness, then.  That’s the deal.”  - C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands

 

William Nicholson’s Shadowlands is the mostly true story of Oxford professor and author C.S. Lewis’s life in the 1950s during the early success of his Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis, who lives as a bachelor with his grumpy older brother Warnie, begins a correspondence with an American writer, Joy Davidman Gresham.  Lewis and Gresham meet and ultimately form a deep friendship and enter into a civil marriage just before Gresham is diagnosed with cancer.

 

Nicholson’s telling of this story has been a success in 3 mediums, a BBC television film in 1986, a stage play in 1989, and a full-length feature film in 1993 which earned him an Academy Award nomination. The Guthrie’s presentation of the stage version debuted Friday, directed by Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling and starring English actor Simon Jones as C. S. Lewis. (Sci-fi buffs may recall Jones from his role Arthur Dent from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy television and radio series.) According to Dowling, Shadowlands was revived in London last year, and the Guthrie’s production is the American premier of the play’s London revival.

 

I thoroughly I enjoyed this production, perhaps one of my favorites shows at the Guthrie of the past couple years. Part of my enjoyment may have been the result of my amazement that I could get such a feeling of warmth from a gaggle of stuffy academics. Shadowlands is as touching a play as it is laugh-out-loud funny.  And it’s funny on many, many occasions.  The jokes about the differences between the English and Americans were particularly apt – and accurate.  (One such joke regarded Americans not understanding the concept of what it means to have inhibitions.) And you can see the fun Dowling was able to have with what is at its core a serious script, when upon the first meeting between Gresham and Lewis in a hotel restaurant, he has Warnie watch the lively conversation between them which ensues with the left to right head motion with which one would watch a tennis match.

 

Standing: Mykola Rieland as young Douglas. Seated: Charity Jones as Joy Gresham with Stephens and Jones

Both of the play’s two acts open with C.S. Lewis (known as Jack to his friends and throughout the play) at a podium giving a lecture regarding subjects that turn out to be some of the themes of the play.  One is the eternal theological question: If God loves man, why does he allow innocent people to suffer?  Lewis speaks of pain as “God’s megaphone” and repeatedly comes around to an image of God as a sculptor with a chisel, chipping away at humankind with pain in an effort to bring us closer to perfection.  Another theme of the play is how grief, especially from loss of a loved one, challenges faith.  Again from the podium, Lewis muses (in words taken from his work, A Grief Observed)), “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”

 

Simon Jones is downright perfect as Lewis, or as perfect as I can guess him to be having never met Lewis himself. James A. Stephens is a loveable and grumpy curmudgeon as Lewis’s older brother Warnie. And Charity Jones co-stars as the unapologetically American Mrs. Gresham. The cast is filled out wonderfully by several actors serving as Lewis’s Oxford colleagues.

 

The set by Patrick Clark is remarkable even in light of what I’ve come to expect from the Guthrie. No matter how many productions I see, I am still impressed by the many ways they can change scenes so silently and quickly with pulleys and moving flats.

 

From before the curtain had even finished coming down, I was sure the Guthrie had hit a home run with this one.  No production is perfect, but this one is the closest to it I have seen in some time – a classic script, enacted lovingly, with intelligence and with style. 

 

Shadowlands runs through December 21^st on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.

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Location Info: The Guthrie Theater
Artist Info: Guthrie Theater

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