Shadowlands

The Denver Center Theatre Company presents Shadowlands, William Nicholson's play about C.S. Lewis's brief, late in life marriage, in the Space Theatre through April 27. Being as Lewis was a scholar, sometime Christian apologist, thoughtful analyst of culture and a writer of admirably clear style, the classically-educated Mrs. Curmudgeon elected to join me in attending a performance last week.

As I have come to expect, the Denver Center production staff oversaw a remarkably professional, if not especially creative, staging of this play. When a play is staged in the round, one can be sure he will get an actor's back at some crucial moment or other; this time out, our seats had the misfortune of missing the face of either Lewis or his eventual bride, Joy, during nearly every one of their scenes together. Nonetheless, I think I can say Graeme Malcolm inhabited C.S. Lewis, or at least this version of Lewis, rather convincingly, even if Kathleen McCall as Joy Davidman was somewhat less lacking in conviction. The other stalwarts of the Denver Center Theatre Company acquited themselves as well as ever.

But as I say, a thoroughly professional production is to be expected from the DCTC. Thankfully, such a staging allows for and invites a careful consideration of the play itself. Or perhaps not so thankfully in this case.

C.S. Lewis's stature amongst 20th century Christian writers cannot be overstated. In my hard-shell Calvinist opinion, he was out of his depth as a theologian, but his understanding of culture, and where a society determined to cut itself loose from all Christian moorings would end up, was remarkable for its insight and foresight. "Prophetic" is a woefully overused adjective, but I can think of no better for his The Abolition of Man. In a different, fictional vein, what I consider his best and most beautiful book, Till We Have Faces, is a lovely account of the Gospel's power to produce repentance and faith.

That being so, one expects a presentation of his most intimate encounter with human joy and grief to be set in the context of Lewis's consistent personal testimony of Christian hope. Instead, Nicholson begins with a Lewis absolutely confident he can explain Christian suffering, only to end with a Lewis utterly undone by the experience of it. "Shadowlands" is a Lewisian term for this present life as a preparation for the life to come: now is merely a shadow of a much greater and more substantial reality. At the play's end, after the death of his beloved, Lewis no longer says we live in the shadowlands. Instead, he says there are only shadows.

Whatever one thinks of C.S. Lewis, he was unquestionably a Christian man who, after his conversion, bore a consistent Christian testimony. Shadowlands turns a Christian man into an existentialist. Regardless of any other merits it might have, that fact makes this not a very worthwhile play at all.