Photo-Manuel-Harlan
Revered author of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S Lewis (Jack) was also a leading Oxford professor. Setting out his stall right at the start of William Nicholson’s award-winning play, from the lecture podium he offers the theory that only through suffering can we comprehend God’s love absolutely.
Sharing a companionable domestic set-up with brother Warnie, where ‘down time’ consists of philosophical enquiry over a pint in the local with other scholars, it is a sedate and gentle existence.
Enter American writer Joy Gresham. Forthright, brash and with a young son in tow, when it becomes apparent that she needs British citizenship in order to remain in England Jack offers her a ‘technical’ registry office marriage. Soon after, Joy is diagnosed with cancer. Only then, fear and shock forcing his emotional intelligence to catch up with his academic prowess, does he realise that he truly loves her. Insisting on a ‘for real’ bedside wedding ceremony, Joy’s terminal diagnosis also reopens the painful wound of losing his mother to cancer as a boy.
Hugh Bonneville and Liz White inhabit the characters with such conviction that I doubt that I was alone in dabbing my eyes. Equally, the humour is delivered with panache and precision timing.
A terrific supporting cast includes Timothy Watson as Professor Riley, Andrew Havill as Warnie and Emilio Doorgasingh as Rev. Harrington. The role of nine-year-old Douglas Gresham is shared between two boys and on press night Eddie Martin acquitted himself with honours.
Peter McKintosh’s set is both beautiful and clever. Facilitating seamlessly fluid scene changes – vignettes of stylish choreography in their own right – glimpses of Narnia are dreamy and wistful.
Photo-Manuel-Harlan
Nicholson’s play may be nigh on thirty years old but Rachel Kavanaugh’s elegant revival hits home because the universal truth surrounding love and loss does not date: Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
In his exquisite book A Grief Observed C.S Lewis might have been countering Tennyson’s affirmation with a reminder that the poet’s romantic theory still demands a steep price: “The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
A stunning start to the Festival season.
At Chichester Festival Theatre until 25 May.
Tickets: 01243 781312 www.cft.org.uk