Wick Theatre Company bring Shadowlands to the stage

It will round off a season which has seen a new look at a Shakespeare and a darkly poignant comedy from Alan Ayckbourn. It now finishes with Oscar-winning William Nicholson’s Tony Award-winning hit play based on the true story of Narnia author C S Lewis and American poet Joy Gresham, nee Davidman.

Shadowlands runs from Wednesday to Saturday, October 4-7 at 7.45 each evening. Book through the Wick Theatre website: www.wicktheatre.co.uk or Ticket Source 0333 666 3366 (transaction fee applies on telephone bookings).

Director Susanne Crosby said: “Narnia, through various films as well as books, has woven itself into the fabric of British culture, but the true story of C S Lewis, known as Jack, is less well known. In 1950s Oxford, Jack lives a comfortable and content life, sharing a house held together by bookcases with his brother Warnie and ruminating with his academic friends about life and love entirely in the abstract.

“He is a man of profound faith and conviction, believes he has all the answers and is satisfied with his life. And then he meets Joy Gresham. Originally from New York, poet Joy Gresham (nee Davidman) arrives in England with her son Douglas, after becoming friends with Jack through letters they have written to each other across the pond. She challenges him in a way that nobody has before, calls him out on the things that he takes for granted as fact and to his amazement shows herself very much his intellectual equal. Which is also a shock for his friends in their male- dominated academic Oxford. Joy and her son Douglas have a profound effect on all those around Jack and more than anything on him. He slowly and unknowingly begins to open his heart and experience a love which he didn’t know existed. Until they are beset by another challenge, which tests all around them.”

Susanne added: “I fell in love with the play when I read it. It spoke to me about it never being too late to change your life, to open your heart: that it’s never too late for love. That anyone can change, that no matter who you are, you can have the most profound effect on those around you. Plus it is so beautifully written, so well observed by someone who really understood the real people this story is about.”

William Nicholson is a multi-award winning and Oscar nominated writer of plays, novels and screenplays, with credits including Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Les Miserables, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and co-writer for Gladiator.

“There is a central theme throughout this play about faith. Jack is of course a firm believer in God and what happens through the play is a great test of that. They all have faith of different kinds, especially Douglas’ faith in Jack himself, and the other worlds of the Narnia books. This play has so much. I’m so excited about it, I can’t wait for audiences to see it.”