Review: Shadowlands at the Mercury stands the test of time

WILLIAM Nicholson’s play examines the love affair between C S Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, and Joy Gresham, and their brief relationship during the 1950s. When they meet, he is a lecturer at Cambridge, theorising on love and suffering, without having experienced it, and she a direct New Yorker in the midst of a marriage breakdown. Gradually, slowly, she breaks through the academic armour with her dry wit and intellect, and they marry-ostensibly to help her remain in the country following her divorce. When he admits he has fallen in love, she is diagnosed with bone cancer, but remission gives them a few years to live their lives together.

Birdsong Production’s finely pitched production captured perfectly the fuggy academic atmosphere, of men guarded from their feelings and from women, and the play, despite being somewhat wordy in places, has stood the test of time well. The theological debates in the first half are necessary to underline Lewis’s journey from a theory of love to a suffering of real love. As C S Lewis, Stephen Boxer handles beautifully the transition to true, albeit brief love. He is well matched by Amanda Ryan’s feisty Joy, taking on the snobbery of the establishment, and defining how they should spend their remaining time together. As Lewis’s brother, Warnie, Denis Lil gives a wonderful performance, full of dry wit and gaining huge laughs with perfect comic timing. Shannon Rewcroft gives a quite astonishing performance as Joy’s son, Douglas, totally convincing, heartbreaking after Joy’s death.

Nicholson’s beautiful script weaves elements from Narnia sparingly but to beautiful effect, and, although much of the audience were in tears at the end, it is a celebration of love and life. It lead to one of his best works, A Grief Observed, and gave C S Lewis the chance, in his fifties, to experience “the sort of happiness men experience in their twenties.” A beautifully pitched production.

PAUL T. DAVIES.