While C. S. Lewis is most well-knownas the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, it is his tragically short marriage to Joy, and his battles with religious faith, that come to the fore in this moving production.
Shadowlands centres upon the development and tragic ending of Lewis’s (a terrific Hugh Bonneville) marriage to American writer Joy (Maggie Siff). The production weaves from the stuffy drawing rooms of Lewis’ home with his intensely intellectual, male friends, to his life-changing meeting and blossoming of a relationship with Joy’s dominant, fiery, opinionated personality. Joy’s tragic death from cancer brings their friendship and marriage, which begins as one of convenience but becomes much more, to an untimely end, and it is this which the piece ruminates upon so movingly.
As C. S. Lewis, Bonneville’s stoic performance is well-crafted, and enables Lewis to soften and warm as his true feelings for Joy are drawn out. Bonneville oozes class in his portrayal of a man rapt with grief and desperately pressured to keep this repressed at a time when male emotions were not openly expressed, with Bonneville’s careful portrayal of this enhanced by Rachel Kavanaugh’s direction, culminating in one particularly heartbreaking moment towards the piece’s conclusion.
Bonneville bounces well off of Maggie Siff’s domineering delivery as Joy, and though the characters do not get a lot of time together, William Nicholson’s script provides moving moments where both characters reflect poignantly on the passing of time. Siff is commanding as Joy, and more than holds her own in establishing the character’s no-nonsense attitude, especially in the face of Lewis’s misogynistic friends, but the play’s runtime bizarrely speeds through a lot of Joy’s illness, feeling a little unbalanced and making her deterioration far too sudden after the interval.
It is a small production, which does enable the focus to spotlight, rightly, the relationship, though it is also bolstered by a small yet effective ensemble cast too. Jeff Rawle is neat as Lewis’s charming, and slightly barmy, brother, Major W. H. Lewis, often exchanging quick-witted one-liners with C.S. for a warm chuckle, while Ayrton English’s Douglas, Joy’s son from her collapsed previous marriage, is used to bridge the gap between the escapist fiction of Lewis’s novels with the harsh reality of the present, brought out too by the blossoming trees upstage designed by Peter McKintosh.
Indeed, Shadowlands has a lot of potential and is mostly successful when it focuses on C.S. and Joy’s lives together. There are also attempts to explore male mental health, the impact of a parent’s death on a child, misogyny and the stifling attitude of the Church towards divorcees, but these are all skipped and scratched over; they are necessary but do take away the spotlight from the pair, ironically given the lack of time they have as it is.
Nevertheless, Shadowlands is a sweet, small, production, spearheaded by two compelling leads and a brutally sad story. It is not the escapism that C.S. Lewis usually provides, but it is still just as long-lasting.
