Shadowlands
Chichester Festival Theatre
The Half God of Rainfall
Kiln Theatre, London
Pah-La
Royal Court Theatre, London
William Nicholson’s Shad- owlands, about a surprise brief tragic romance of the writer C.S. Lewis, has a long record of success across media and oceans: it won a Bafta as a 1985 BBC television play, subsequently pleased the Evening Standard and Tony award judges as a stage play in London and New York, then was Oscar-nominated as a movie.
Its almost all-male cast – a consequence of the bachelor donnish circles in which Lewis moved – might be seen as problematic in today’s equality-conscious theatre. However, Rachel Kavanaugh’s very fine Chichester revival, while wryly making clear that these men and their attitudes were products of their time, also brings out surprising contemporary resonances.
For instance, Lewis’ crisis was the collision between theory and experience. Able to write classic children’s stories, such as the Narnia books, despite having no children, he also wrote popular theology on the meaning of love and marriage despite lacking personal experience of either; in that sense, though an Anglican bachelor, being analogous to the Roman Catholic clergy.