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Amanda Ryan as Joy and Stephen Boxer as Jack. Pictures: Jack Ladenburg ShadowlandsMalvern Theatres
***** 'PAIN is God’s
megaphone to rouse a sleeping world!’ This statement by C.S.Lewis in
Shadowlands
highlights a major theme in this play - pain
and suffering. He opens the play with a lecture to
undergraduates on this theme, and the play explores the topic through
the pain of Joy Gresham’s illness and death and its impact on Lewis
himself. Shadowlands
portrays a period in the life of famous author C.S. Lewis, an academic
bachelor in his 50s, whose world is transformed by his relationship with
a divorced woman from the United States. Joy Gresham begins a correspondence with the
renowned author of the Narnia books and, accompanied by her son
Douglas, Shannon Rewcroft, she gets herself invited to tea with him in Oxford. Lewis, known to his friends as Jack, is
accompanied by his brother Major W.H. Lewis, known as Warnie, a retired military man, with
whom he lives in a shared house in Headington, Oxford. Slowly the very formal and socially restrained
Jack becomes drawn into a relationship with Joy, whose alcoholic and
adulterous husband decides to divorce her. He agrees to marry her
‘technically’ to enable her to get residency in the UK. Subsequently she discovers she has a serious form
of bone cancer and has a limited time to live. This precipitates a
massive change in Jak. He discovers a capacity to love that he had
never known. He becomes more fully human and experiences the extremes of
elation and devastation, of love, intimacy, shared pain and ultimately
loss. They enjoy a period of time, some of which is
spent in Greece, when her condition is in remission and they are able to
deepen their relationship of love and friendship. Jack, the academic and creative author, the
theologian who wrote and taught about God and suffering and love,
experiences the highs and lows of human emotions in a way that
challenges his faith and his tidy reasoning about life and God, but
through it all, he becomes both more human and discovers ultimately a
more profound faith.
This production is beautifully written by William
Nicholson, adapted from his 1985 BBC TV film. The dialogue includes many
witty exchanges and there is plenty of humour to spice a moving
narrative. The chauvinistic dons discussing women and the mutual teasing
among characterful men of differing beliefs provide many laughs in the
audience. There is irony aplenty in the bold and open
manner of the American Joy when she encounters the stiff, formal and
reserved Englishmen. At the centre of this production Stephen Boxer
plays Jack (C.S. Lewis) and Amanda Ryan plays Joy Gresham. Their performances are wonderfully modulated.
Jack moves from the restrained, very English intellectual to a man of
deep and intense, though strongly controlled and understated, emotion. His performance is really powerful in that
regard. Amanda Ryan’s Joy moves from the somewhat brash American to the
increasingly sensitive and insightful wife whose suffering brings out
the best traits in human nature.
Around these two we have an extremely strong
team. Denis Lill plays Warnie, Jack’s brother. At times he is engagingly
bewildered and confused by what is happening to his brother, but
unselfishly he accommodates, adapts and supports the couple in their
journey to marriage, and through pain and loss. His performance is
beautifully controlled. Simon Shackleton is Professor Christopher Riley. His rather brash cynical part provides a good foil to Jack in particular. The team is very experienced and directed very
well by Alastair Whatley. The design provided an excellent, flexible set
that was reminiscent of the old Oxford colleges; all aspects of the show
were sensitive and delightful, including the costume details of that
era. Other themes treated in this play include the
nature of friendship and the way art functions and reflects or becomes
reality. The attitudes to women betrayed by the chauvinistic dons are
exposed and are moderated by the relationship between Jack and Joy. This is an intellectually satisfying play,
beautifully written: it balances the more serious and moving narrative
of Joy’s illness and death, and Jack’s powerlessness to relieve her pain
and his own later grief, with some very witty dialogue and amusing
moments. It has a profundity that will delight the more reflective and
mature audience. To 16-04-16 Tim Crow 11-04-16
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