Review: Shadowlands

Shadowlands is an account of that doomed relationship, cut short because Lewis’s partner Joy Davidman developed cancer, and died. Davidman was an American, with two young sons (we only meet one of them in the stage drama) and met Lewis because one of her boys was passionate about the author’s series of books, the Chronicles of Narnia. She wrote to him, travelled to the UK, formed their liaison, and never returned.

It was, by all accounts, an unconventional but very sincere and loving marriage. He was a hugely successful (if self-effacing) writer, a man who had fought in the First World War and who had then gone back to college to achieve a trio of Firsts, and become a tutor then a Fellow. She had been born Jewish, then converted to Christianity, and was passionate about her new faith, and writing poetry.

In William Nicholson’s drama, inspired by their story, there is a strong suggestion that their love for each other, while committed and honest, came as something a second place to their enjoyment of intellectual combat and theorising. In other words, their companionship was the glue that held them together.

Nicholson’s skill is to balance a view of the internalised milieu of the dons, all sceptical to a man about Lewis’s actions and intentions, and to also to examine his motives and feelings. To lift up a veil on this rather secretive person and also the environment that made and shaped him.

Stephen Boxer plays Lewis as a rather likeable but equally puzzled character who cannot quite explain his own feelings – Joy is an alien force in his well-ordered life. At the other end of this emotional see-saw is Amanda Ryan as the quixotic Joy, devoted to her boys, to literature, and the notion that England is the melting pot for all things literary. To find that she has needs deeper than admiration for her hero, comes as much of a surprise to her as it does to him. As a writer, Lewis was generous and compassionate (if not always to everyone’s tastes), but it was as a man that the chill set in, enforced and strengthened by the place where he worked. Joy Davidman arrived, lit a spark, and drove back that coldness. Alastair Whatley’s cool, clear direction brings out the very best in both of them, and provides us with a lot of answers to the enigma that was Clive Staples Lewis. But not all. And that is what makes this play a fascinating evening in the theatre.

Cast, Doncaster, to April 30.