Review Round-Up: SHADOWLANDS at Aldwych Theatre

Shadowlands was adapted for the stage by William Nicholson, telling the story of C. S. Lewis during his time as an academic at Oxford, who is perfectly happy being a permanent bachelor, until he meets the outspoken American poet Joy Davidman, sparking an unexpected but powerful romance. But when Joy is diagnosed with cancer, Lewis must grapple with the realities of the fragility of life and love and face a harrowing challenge to his own faith. Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, Shadowlands stars Hugh Bonneville as C. S. Lewis, Maggie Siff as Joy Davidman, Jeff Rawle as Major W.H. Lewis (Warnie), Tony Jayawardena as Rev. Harry Harrington, and Timothy Watson as Professor Christopher Riley.

London Box Office

★★★★

“A playful sensitivity while successfully avoiding any sense of clunking caricature.”

Reviewer: Stuart King

“While this is no fairytale romance, both actors deliver with light brushstrokes, serving to illuminate their characters' backstories with a playful sensitivity while successfully avoiding any sense of clunking caricature.Peter McKintosh's traditional set is of tall bookshelves ranged either side of the stage and a central revolve on which various armchairs and pieces of furniture come and go courtesy of choreographed cast members.”

Read the review here.

The Evening Standard

★★★

“Hugh Bonneville is a perfect fit for C.S. Lewis”

Reviewer: Nick Curtis

“Rachel Kavanaugh’s handsome, old-school production - originally staged at Chichester in 2019 with Bonneville but without Siff - features comfortably assured performances from the two leads and the supporting cast. But the play’s emotional impact has dulled over the years. My guest, who warned me she’d cried buckets over the 1993 film version, remained dry-eyed.”

Read the review here.

WhatsOnStage

★★★

“There’s comfort in an old-fashioned, well-made play”

Reviewer: Sarah Crompton

“Nicolson’s play, adapted from a television film and later made into a movie, is expertly directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, who firmly emphasises the humour and incongruity of this passion between a celibate English don and a straight-talking American poet, on the run from her alcoholic husband with a Narnia-reading child in tow. But she cannot disguise the way it skates along the surface of multiple moral dilemmas.”

Read the review here.

Financial Times

★★★

“Hugh Bonneville is a lovestruck CS Lewis in poignant West End revival”

Reviewer: Sarah Hemming

“Surging through it is a tender response to love: the unexpected joy of finding it, its transforming power and the searing pain of losing it. And while, as a piece of drama, it’s rather starchy and old-fashioned — a little like its protagonist — Rachel Kavanaugh’s production (first seen at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2019) manages to transcend many of its limitations and is carried by two intricate and sensitive performances from Hugh Bonneville and Maggie Siff.”

Read the review here.

Hugh Bonneville, Jeff Rawle, and Maggie Siff in SHADOWLANDS. Photo by Johan Persson.

TimeOut

★★★

“Hugh Bonneville is a charming CS Lewis in this sweet but simplistic period romance”

Reviewer: Andrzej Lukowski

“It’s an elegant, elegiac play blessed with two extremely watchable performances. Siff’s brittle, vulnerable charisma is extremely winning. And Bonneville is a delight – there are invariably shades of Hugh Bonnevilleness to every performance he gives, but his Lewis is marked out by a boyish animation that is in a constant tussle with his more rarified spiritual ponderings. It doesn’t exactly hurt that they’re a handsome couple, with Bonneville’s grumpy good looks smoothing over the age gap.”

Read the review here.

The Independent

★★★

“Hugh Bonneville’s performance can’t capture the darker realities of grief”

Reviewer: Alice Saville

“Rachel Kavanaugh’s production injects little notes of magic – a forest beyond the bookshelves, softly falling snow – that help suggest the imaginative landscapes that Joy and Lewis tread together. But there’s still something deeply joyless about this play’s reluctance to show the couple actually being happy together before they descend into a world of hospitals and misery. It’s as though the knowledge that Joy is a scandalously divorced woman (and thus ineligible for traditional Christian marriage) means that Nicholson can only justify depicting their love when the character is at death’s door.”

Read the review here.

The Guardian

★★

“Hugh Bonneville charms in a weepie that’s as creaky as an old library”

Reviewer: Arifa Akbar

“It has charm and pulls you into its sadness but seems as creaky as the half-filled, wood-panelled library in its backdrop. There is too much a sense of a drama unfolding, from the moment Lewis (Hugh Bonneville) receives a letter from American fan, Joy Davidman (Maggie Siff), to his slow falling in love and her descent into illness. Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, it plods from one scene to the next, sleepy in pace and action but breezy in its emotions. The loves story seems to sit apart from the thoughts on faith and suffering that Lewis voices at university podium lectures.”

Read the review here.

If you love a good love story (tragic or otherwise), we compiled a list of theatre shows to watch in London for Valentine's Day for all those romantics out there. Valentine's Day may have passed, but if you're still in the mood to watch a love story play out on stage, check it out and be inspired.