O.C. THEATER / LORI E. PIKE : Interpreting the Shades of C.S. Lewis

The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be “like real life,” in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region. --C.S. Lewis in the essay “On Stories”

“Shadowlands,” the South Coast Repertory production that opens tonight, is a story about English author Clive Staples Lewis and his romance with Joy Davidman Gresham, the American divorcee he married after several years of platonic friendship. Their brief marriage and Joy’s death from cancer takes Lewis from bliss to despair to an ultimately deeper embrace of his Christian faith.

But presenting a genuine historical figure in the play, which had successful runs in London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo, raises the issue of how much “like real life” this portrait of C.S. Lewis is.

In some circles, after all, Lewis is an icon of contemporary Christianity--those who know him may be delighted, dismayed, or both by the play, depending upon how the “Shadowlands” rendition measures up to their concept of the man.

The Oxford and Cambridge professor of Medieval literature, writer of science fiction, poetry and theology as well as “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” and other “Narnia” books, was certainly known and respected in England and the United States during his lifetime. But Lewis’ popularity has escalated since his death on Nov. 22, 1963, to the point that this modest, unassuming university don is now regarded as a sort of super-hero of the Christian faith.

On the other hand, why should anyone who is not an admirer of Lewis’ work be remotely interested in this bio-drama?

Not surprisingly, each of the three men primarily responsible for bringing the current production of “Shadowlands” to life--playwright William Nicholson, actor Dakin Matthews and director Martin Benson--had a slightly different take on the play, and on the man.

“My mother was taught by Lewis at Oxford, but she didn’t like him. She felt he was unpleasant toward women,” Nicholson said, speaking by phone from his home in East Sussex, England. “So I had quite a bias against him, based mostly on ignorance.”

When he was asked by a friend to help shape a television screenplay on Lewis, Nicholson initially turned the project down out of lack of interest.

“But then I said I’d do the script if I wouldn’t be held to factual account--if I could do the story that spoke to me, which is a story of love and pain,” he said.

“On the surface, we are utterly unalike,” he said. “I’m a child of the ‘60s; Lewis was much older (he was born in 1898). But the central element of his love affair that I hooked onto--his fear of emotional vulnerability--was very strong in me. In the end, I think all writers write about themselves, for themselves.”

Nicholson chose to keep research to a minimum for the BBC version of “Shadowlands,” which first aired in the United States in 1986, and subsequently for the expanded stage script.

“I find that too much research kills--you end up with a documentary piece, or journalism, and not drama or art,” he said. “I would say most biographical drama suffers from an attempt to rely on truth. Truth isn’t going to make it true .”

The playwright also feels that audiences needn’t be familiar with Lewis’ life to enjoy the play.

“The vast number of people who went to see ‘Shadowlands,’ I would say, didn’t know Lewis from Adam. Other people told them it was a powerful theater experience, and that’s why they went.

“It seems some people found it a kind of therapy--they would go through their own thought processes during the play about their own lives and loves,” he said. “When the productions work--which they don’t always--they have a kind of cathartic effect that elicits a very strong emotional reaction.”

Nicholson’s current work is mostly on feature film scripts, including one for the movie version of “Shadowlands,” shooting now at Oxford with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in the roles that Matthews and Kandis Chappell are essaying at South Coast.

But he hopes to write more plays soon. “It’s the greatest thrill to see something you’ve written realized on stage.”

When actor Dakin Matthews takes the stage, hands nervously crammed into the pockets of a tweedy brown coat, he looks remarkably like the Lewis of black-and-white photos in his biographies.

“When I play a character that is roughly contemporary, I feel obliged to look like him, because his picture’s going to be in the program, and there are enough people who read Lewis books who expect him to not only sound a certain way, but to look a certain way,” he said.

Matthews, 52, studied theology and then taught Renaissance and Medieval literature some years back at Cal State Hayward, so he had extensive knowledge of Lewis’ writings long before his current role.

Still, he enjoyed doing deeper research on the Englishman’s life. Alas, some bits of Lewis trivia that he unearthed could not be worked into the production.

“He smoked 60 cigarettes a day!” Matthews revealed. “I think he was embarrassed by that. I kept asking Martin if I could put in a pipe or cigarettes, because I found it rather piquant that he had robust appetites and addictions while he was writing these apparently cool and common-sensical pieces about restraint and Christianity.

“But sometimes things you find in research the playwright has deliberately excluded from the piece, and as much as you’d like to use it,” he said, “it would only confuse the dramaturgy.”

For Matthews, “Shadowlands” chronicles one man’s intense struggle to reconcile his faith in a loving God with the pain in his own life and that of his wife.

“He believes more strongly at the end, but has to pass through the suffering first. It’s really a ‘dark night of the soul’ sort of thing,” he said.

“A large number of people have read Lewis’ books, and Orange County is probably more full of those people than anywhere else, I would imagine,” he added. “This play humanizes Lewis. It shows a real man for whom personal beliefs came through great cost.”

“I very much wanted to direct this play,” said South Coast artistic director Martin Benson.

“I think it’s about how we deal with the condition of life, of which grief is a part,” he said. “You don’t have to have a wife die of cancer to be able to appreciate this play. Every one of us has had a loss of some kind. The greatest lie of the universe is ‘They all lived happily ever after.’ ”

Benson was also intrigued by the romance that Lewis, a stodgy, somewhat chauvinistic bachelor, found in his late 50s.

“Joy was a tough cookie--a life force with absolute unwillingness to play any polite games. And Lewis was entranced by her,” Benson said.

Finally, it was Lewis’ wrestling with faith that piqued the director’s interest.

“In most dramatic literature that I deal with now, religion is generally attacked--and not for inappropriate reasons,” he said.

“But as I read ‘Shadowlands,’ it fascinated me that a man of Lewis’ intelligence eventually had no problem accepting Christianity. Here’s a man with a tremendous mind who fought against faith and even became an atheist,” he said. “But he finally came to accept it.

“So, it’s a matter of equal time, in a way,” Benson said. “Who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong about religion, but we certainly need to look at it from both sides. I wanted to go into that world a bit, and explore the corners of it.”

*”Shadowlands,” William Nicholson’s drama, opens tonight at 8 at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Show times: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Through June 27. $25 to $34. A pay-what-you-will performance, with a suggested minimum of $5, will be presented Saturday at 2:30 p.m. (714) 957-4033. Free-lance writer Lori E. Pike, a frequent contributor to Calendar, wrote her master’s thesis on the fiction of C.S. Lewis.