Shadowlands: an ‘elegant revival’ of William Nicholson’s play

Hugh Bonneville in Shadowlands — Hugh Bonneville catches C.S. Lewis’ endearing awkwardness and ‘self-righteous stuffiness’

(Image credit: Johan Persson)

“If the new Archbishop of Canterbury needs a spot of encouragement in these turbulent times,” said Clive Davis in The Times, “she might take comfort in the fact that an old-school, well-made play about a Christian intellectual can still find an audience in the West End.” Although, of course, it helps that this “elegant revival” of “Shadowlands”, William Nicholson’s 1989 play about C.S. Lewis and his late-flowering love for the American poet Joy Davidman, features “a star as bankable” as Hugh Bonneville. The play packs a considerable spiritual and emotional journey into two hours, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. It features a slow-burn courtship, a romantic awakening, a shocking terminal illness and a crisis of faith. Yet Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives the story “the vital, unifying aura of a restless, soulful quest”.

Bonneville is “wonderful” as the theologian and author of the Narnia novels, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. He is awkward and endearing, but also catches Lewis’ “self-righteous stuffiness” and “self-imposed loneliness”. “The moments towards the close, when he is suddenly overwhelmed by feeling, are deeply affecting.” The “real star” of the show, though, is US actress Maggie Siff, said Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail. As Joy, the American interloper who turns Lewis’ Oxford world of fusty regimentation and closeted misogyny upside down, she is superb.

I’m afraid I was unstirred by Bonneville’s “unstintingly mild-mannered performance”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. There is something “deeply joyless” about this play, with its “heavily romanticised” view of suffering, and “quote-worthy moralising” more suited to a fridge magnet than a great drama. “Shadowlands” is an “old-fashioned weepie” and, as such, it certainly has its charms, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But here, “it just feels old- fashioned”: it plods slowly from one scene to the next, as “creaky as the half-filled, wood-panelled library” that forms its backdrop.

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