Narnia Fans » Stage Plays

Welcome to Tumnus’s Book Shelf where we review any and all books related to Narnia and CS Lewis! For this weeks review, we will be looking at CS Lewis’s
The Great Divorce

Book Title: The Great Divorce
Author: CS Lewis
Publisher: HarperOne; New Ed edition (February 6, 2001)

ISBN-13: 978-0060652951

Summary of the book:

Some Possible Spoilers.( Please Highlight to read)

One rainy day a man stood in line waiting to board a bus. After waiting for a fairly long time and watching as the other passengers got on and watching everything with the other passengers in their attempts to get on board, the man was let on. The man notices that there seemed to be a Light about the driver. This Light even seemed to fill the bus.

As the bus was driving down the road it suddenly flew off into the air. The man spoke with a fellow passenger about the town and where the bus may be heading. The bus, or as it was called The Ominibus, came to a lush green valley unlike any on Earth. Everything in this Valley seemed far more real, and far more alive and vibrant than on Earth, so much so that the passengers of the bus seem as Ghosts in comparison.

The passengers are greeted by the Solid People, or those who dwell in this world. One of them, George McDonald, meets the man and guides him through this world that is filled with gentle lions, unicorns and may other wondrous things. This world exists in-between the worlds of Heaven, Hell and life itself. The man witnesses the discussions between many of the Ghosts and the Solid People and learns what it is that separated these two worlds and leads some to favoring one and not the other.

SPOILERS!As the man’s time in this world comes to a close, George McDonald reveals to him that all of this had been a dream, one which he must relate to others. He awakens , finding himself back home, just as an air raid begins above him.END SPOILERS!

Review:

Jesus once told a parable about two men. A very wealthy man, and a poor beggar named Lazarus. The rich man had everything and Lazarus had nothing. One day both men died. The Rich man went to Hell, while Lazarus was carried by angels to Paradise. The rich man looked over and saw Lazarus at peace in paradise with Abraham. He begged Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his hand in water and touch it to the rich man’s to cool him for he was in great agony. The Rich man said he could not send him as there was a great gulf fixed between Heaven and Hell that none could cross.

It is through this gulf between Heaven and Hell that Lewis allows the reader to peer through in his book The Great Divorce. In this fictional story, Lewis examines the nature of Heaven and Hell. The title’s implication is that the two are so far divided from one another that there is no chance that they can ever be reconciled. Lewis shows just what some of these divisions are.

The story is written from the first person perspective. It is implied by various details that the man in question is CS Lewis, who is dreaming a dream. Because of his limited knowledge as a first person narrator Lewis is able to convey the same sense of wonder and amazement at this strange land he finds himself in, similar to the feeling his characters of the Pevensies feel when they are in Narnia.

Much like with Narnia, Lewis the narrator is taking us to a world that we have never been to. Unlike Narnia, which is like the fantasy world we dream of, this land is one that as Shakespeare said, “ None have journeyed back from.” Lewis in effect is showing what does lie in that “undiscovered country” of death and how we can end up in either the worlds of Heaven or Hell.

In some ways The Great Divorce is not that dissimilar from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In both works the authors take us to the eternal realm, allow us to see the inhabitants and what leads some humans to ending up in one place or another. Much like with Dante, a guide is needed to navigate through this strange country. For Dante it was the poet Virgil in The Inferno, and Dante’s dead lover, Beatrice in Purgatorio and Paradiso.The guide for Lewis is George McDonald, noted author of numerous fantasy works that later inspired those of Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

As Virgil served as a guide and source for inspiration for Dante, McDonald had also served as a sort of guide for Lewis in his own personal life. It was the works of McDonald that Lewis said “baptized his imagination.” Lewis’s “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” rational that was used to confirm the deity of Christ in Mere Christianity, was first employed by McDonald in his Everlasting Man. Lewis felt he owed a great debt to McDonald’s works, both in terms of his own fantasy and his Christian faith, so to use one who guided him indirectly is fitting. Notably Lewis makes reference to the appearance of Beatrice to Dante in Purgatorio when McDonald first appears to him.

There are also many other characters that fall into one of two groups. Except for Lewis and McDonald, none of them are given names as much as descriptive terms and characteristics to describe who they were in life, such as “Man with the Bowler Hat”,”The Hard-bitten Ghost”, “The Tragedian”, and “The Dwarf.” The names of these characters is actually not needed. The only thing that matters with any of them is how they have ended up in Hell as opposed to Heaven.

These people are divided into two groups.The first are the Solid Ones, the people dwell in this Land. The second is The Ghosts or the new arrivals. Through the conversations between these two types of people, Lewis shows what divides Heaven and Hell. The key divider between Heaven and Hell is the choice of Christ. Those who accept Him become Solid.

Perhaps the most haunting conversation is between a Ghost and a Solid Man who killed the Ghost’s friend while the Solid Man was alive. The Solid Man came to Christ and is in Heaven with the Ghost’s friend. It is unsettling for many Christians as it reminds us that essentially every one can get into Heaven if they only choose Christ. This means that the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Phillip Pullman, Nietzsche and Osama Bin-Laden have the chance of being in Heaven with Jesus and standing side by side with the likes of Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Theresa, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Billy Graham.

The world Lewis visits is described as being “real” and “hard” and is far more real than the world he left. Animals such as lions, fish, and even unicorns dwell and thrive in perfect harmony. This is in contrasted with the dismal ,rainy and virtually empty city they left. In some ways the world Lewis visits is not that dissimilar from Aslan’s kingdom in comparison to the Shadowlands in Narnia, which in turn is derived from Plato’s ideas of Higher Forms.

The Platonic ideas, the references to Dante and even George McDonald himself may be lost on many modern readers, as they may not understand them as most works of classic literature are fading into obscurity. This is the same fate of many of the allusions made in this, and Lewis’s other books, to works of classical literature. They can leave some modern readers confused. Lewis was a scholar of literature and writing in a time when people were more versed in such things. While a modern person may not understand completely what he means Lewis in away helps preserve the ideas in these works of literature and adds to their legacy.

Protestant and Catholic scholars debate about whether or not the dream is set in Purgatory as it appears to be an area in between Heaven and Hell. The location of the dream is not as important as the meaning. Quoting Milton, Lewis says that the choice of Hell over Heaven lies in saying, “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” and in doing so, choosing to favor our Pride and our own will over God’s. The choice of Heaven lies in giving oneself over to God and choosing Christ.

In doing so all the good things of life are outshined by the glory of Heaven. Lewis reminds us that this choice is always before us and that choosing Hell is to choose something that is even more pale, and horrible, and smaller in comparison to even this world. He reassures us that Hell can never veto Heaven as it is nothing next to Heaven. For those bound for Hell, this life ends up being as good as it gets.

The is choice of Heaven is one we all have to make, and must make it while we dwell on Earth. In The Great Divorce, Lewis shows not only why we have to make it, but how. Lewis reminds us in his dream that the only way for any of us to get to Heaven is to choose Christ and let go of ourselves.

Five out of Five sheilds

Teaching 53 children and teens how to apply makeup to look like animals and mystical creatures could have been a recipe for disaster.

April Morgan found a formula to make it fun.

And like the characters in “Narnia,” the musical adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” perhaps a bit of good luck and magic were involved.

Morgan, 25, who is working on a degree in communications with an emphasis in theater from West Virginia State University, said she involved the cast members in the process.

Watching “The Chronicles of Narnia” helped kids visualize the characters.

“We actually sat down and I drew some stuff out and the kids drew stuff out and we drew inspiration from the movie,” Morgan said.

“I did two Saturday workshops where I taught the kids and their parents to apply the makeup and the prosthetics.”

Each character was given a diagram showing what his or her makeup should look like.

[Read the rest at the Daily Mail]

Hey, Narnia Fans! Welcome to “Behind the Wardrobe” an Interview Series with Douglas Gresham. Join me as we find out about CS Lewis, Narnia and more in this interview series.

Special thanks to Paul Martin (The Webmaster for NarniaFans) and to Mr. Douglas Gresham himself for this amazing opportunity. And an even bigger thanks to Mr. Gresham for putting up with a few of my impossible questions. Thanks for being such a great sport about it!

For this week: On The Shadowlands…

JS: What was your opinion of the play The Shadowlands?

DG: I think it a wonderful play, but then I am biased. I have been a consultant to Shadowlands in all its varying inceptions ever since Brian Sibley and Norman Stone first wrote the concept script about 20 odd years ago. Incidentally the play is being revived and will shortly open again in London’s West End. I don’t know though whether there are any plans to move the production to America though.

JS: How did you feel about how they portrayed Jack?

DG: I have seen so many productions in which the portrayals always depended on the actor playing the role that it is hard to remember a specific portrayal. The play itself portrays not C.S.Lewis, nor Jack, but a fictional character based on him. Remember that Shadowlands is not supposed to be an Historical documentary, but is a very beautiful love story based on real events in the lives of some real people.

JS:Thank you for the clarification that The Shadowlands is not a historical documentary. In a class I took in college it was, more or less, portrayed as a historical documentary to us.

DG: It was never intended to be so, and I would have though that it is pretty obvious. After all there are only four characters based on real people in the whole movie, all the rest are entirely fictional.

JS: Have most people mistaken the play for a historical documentary?

DG: I don’t think so, I haven’t come across too many folk who have.

JS: Notably one of the major differences was the absence of your brother David. How did you feel about this change?

DG: This change was made for very straightforward theatrical and dramatic reasons and so when I fully understood the reasons I had no problem with it.

JS: Would you be able to elaborate a bit on what the theatrical and dramatic reasons for the exclusion of your brother from the play were?

DG: It is very simple really, first, if you have two children each reacting differently to the same situations, you automatically have two subplots. In the first TV version of Shadowlands this was done, and on studying it later, it was discovered that having the two subplots actually detracted from the main theme of the piece rather than complementing it, so it was decided to drop one child for the Stage play version. Also contributing to that decision was the fact that for stage work each child character has to be played by two child actors as there are legal restrictions on how many performances a child actor may make without a break. This was seen to work very well and thus for Dick Attenborough’s version the one child policy was adhered to.

JS: How about some of the other changes they made to the story? For example Lewis driving, your character asking for Jack to sign a copy of Magician’s Nephew, of Jack as a Roman Catholic.

DG: As far as I know Jack was never portrayed as a Roman Catholic, but as for the rest I didn’t care hoot.

JS: How did you feel about Anthony Hopkins’s and Debra Winger’s portrayals of Jack and Joy in the film version?

DG: Tony was faithfully presenting the role he found in the screenplay, and not trying to be C.S.Lewis or Jack, and I think that is a pity because I think Tony could have portrayed the real Jack very well indeed. Debra on the other hand was superb as my mother. However if one is going to talk about the film, one has to say that Dick Attenborough is one of the finest directors ever to walk the planet (and one of the finest English Gentlemen as well) , and his fine touch and gentle hand made what I consider to be a classic movie with which I am very proud to have been associated.

JS: How well did Joseph Mazzello do at portraying you in the film?

DG: Very well indeed, but as I told him on set one day, for him it was easy, after all he had a script to follow, I had to ad-lib the whole thing.

JS: The funny thing for me with the film of “The Shadowlands” is that I forever associated both director Richard Attenborough and Joseph Mazzello with their roles as John Hammond and Tim Murphy in Steven Speilberg’s Jurassic Park.

DG: Knowing them both personally made a big difference I suppose.

JS: Though it could be worse. I even had a friend who had a hard time watching the film as she associated Anthony Hopkins with Hannibal Lecter!

DG: I think that a lot of people had that reaction to him in Remains of the Day rather than in Shadowlands, but I know what you mean.

JS: Have you ever considered playing Jack in a production of The Shadowlands?

DG: I really don’t think I could do it justice (the role I mean), I am too emotionally involved in the whole thing.

That’s it for this weeks installment. Come back next week when we discuss Douglas’s book Jack’s Life , CS Lewis’s unfinished novels “The Dark Tower” and “After Ten Years”, the film of The Screwtape Letters and some other matters.

Magis Theatre Company will stage an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ novel THE GREAT DIVORCE in collaboration with Eastern Gate Entertainment at Theatre 315 in New York City’s theatre district.

Here’s a trailer for it!

Big thanks to George Drance, the Artistic Director of Magis Theatre, for the link!

[More Information: Jesuit actor plans to stage Lewis' The Great Divorce]

The Festival of Narnia featuring two stage shows for the whole family will play at the Shamblin Theatre, opening after Thanksgiving and running through the holiday season. The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe will run from November 24th thru December 17th and The Magician’s Nephew runs January 5th through 13th. The plays incorporate full casts, wonderful costumes, and creative sets as well as special intermission activities for children including spot prizes, Lion Juice and genuine Turkish Delight Candy!

Directed by David Payne, the two shows boast the biggest casts ever assembled by Rising Image Productions with over 30 performers in each show. Not only is it the first Festival of Narnia to be theatrically staged in Nashville, it is the first to be staged in the USA. With over 100 performances throughout the USA, no other theatrical company has presented more performances in America of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew.

All cast members were drawn from the Middle Tennessee area confirming the wealth of dramatic talent to be found in the Volunteer State.

Tickets are priced between $10 and $20. For More information or show images call (615) 483 4332. Check our calendar for exact dates.

[Christian Activities]

PRESS RELEASE: The Petoskey area is gearing up for its fourth annual month-long festival honoring the life and works of author C.S. Lewis.

Activities begin with the kickoff weekend Oct. 26-29, when community groups and guest scholars will explore “Myth, Imagination and Faith: A Spiritual Journey Through Literature.” That is the title of a forthcoming documentary on authors Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The film is co-produced by Petoskey filmmaker David Crouse and award-winning director Chip Duncan of Milwaukee, co-creators of the 2002 PBS documentary, “The Magic Never Ends: The Life and Work of C. S. Lewis.”

“Myth” features interviews with an international cast of scholars including Reza Aslan of Santa Barbara, Calif., author and scholar of comparative religions; and Dr. Christopher Mitchell, director of the Wade Center at Wheaton College. Both will take part in a screening of rough edits and a panel discussion with the film’s co-producers on Friday evening, Oct. 27, at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey.

The kick-off weekend also will feature a day-long seminar Oct. 28 entitled “Windows to Other Worlds: C. S. Lewis on Imagination and Literature,” also at North Central Michigan College.

Designed for educators, administrators, students and lifelong learners, the seminar features scholars Peter Schakel of Hope College and Leland Ryken of Wheaton College. Half-day registrations are available.

Other Lewis-related events throughout November include musical performances, community arts and library programs, school reading events, discussion groups and the annual children’s performance of “Narnia: The Musical” Nov. 3-5.

Some events are free and open to the public, while others require registration or tickets.

For more information, visit www.cslewisfestival.org or call 347-5550.

We’ve just posted the tenth edition of the NarniaFans Mailbag. We’ve answered ten letters this week, covering casting, battles, plays, and Christian symbolism.

Click here for the tenth NarniaFans Mailbag!

In August BG Touring are to perform ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival.

BG Touring is a theatre company established by drama students from Bishop Grosseteste College in Lincoln. The students have taken on various roles needed to produce a successful show ranging from acting and set production, to lighting and costume. At last years Edinburgh Festival BG Touring received a four star review for their performance of the show ‘The Flood’.

‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ is a great family show with humour and adventure. The show is the fifth story in the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ and is a great sequel to the movie ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ which was released in UK cinemas in December 2005.

The play surrounds the magical voyage of Lucy and Edmund as they journey back to Narnia, where accompanied and protected by Aslan, the children battle mystical powers across the high seas in search of the seven missing Lords. With lavish costumes and a realistic lion the show is enthralling for young and old.

BG Touring has worked hard to produce this first class show, alongside studying for their degrees. They have put many hours and a lot of effort into preparing and rehearsing.

The company would not be able to attend the festival without the support and funding from BGC and The Higher Education Innovations Fund. The company have also raised awareness and funds by undertaking a car wash and a college Big Brother event.

The company also has groups of street theatre performers and a samba band who will be performing in Edinburgh so look out for the singing nuns, mischievous gnomes and lively scouts.

The show is running from 22nd – 25th August at Augustine’s Theatre, Edinburgh

To book tickets visit www.edfringe.com or call the box office on 0131 226 5138

‘The trip to Edinburgh, in my opinion is an invaluable experience to all students involved. It was a fantastic event, worth all the hard work.’ Quote from BG Touring Student who attended last year’s festival.

Like hundreds of actors in New York, George Drance holds down another job while pursuing his acting career. Unlike his contemporaries, though, Drance doesn’t fill in as a temp or wait tables. In fact, his other work is as much a vocation as is his acting. As a Jesuit priest, Fr. Drance integrates his two worlds with the ease of a skilled performer.

“I pray before every performance, sometimes by myself and sometimes the group I am with will ask me to lead them,” he said. “I dedicate my performance to God and try to focus on emptying myself so the Spirit can find a clear channel.”

On a sunny, cold January afternoon, Fr. Drance, 43, has just come from an audition for a commercial and in a couple hours will try out for a new off-Broadway play. In between auditions he sits on an overstuffed sofa in a lounge two floors above the off-Broadway theater he is hoping to book for his latest effort at combining religious and theatrical expression. The actor/priest is adapting C.S. Lewis’ 1946 novel The Great Divorce for the stage. If all goes well, it will have its world premiere here, at Theatre 315, in January 2007.

“It’s the first book in my life I ever picked up and could not put down until I finished it,” he said. “It was on my high school reading list for senior year.”

In Lewis’ fairy tale-like story of salvation, Fr. Drance finds accessible characters, universal themes and poignant situations.

“His understanding of human nature and how we create our own personal hells is so full of pathos. You really feel for these people because you have friends and family in similar situations.”

Presented as a dream, the novel takes a man on a journey toward heaven where he observes fellow travelers whose anger, skepticism and worldly interests cause them to turn from God’s grace and return to earth, which they will find has become hell.

“We all know someone who is trapped by the past or by regret or by bitterness or ego and these are the things that keep us in our own personal hells.”

Fr. Drance, who teaches acting as an artist-in-residence at Fordham University, received permission from the Lewis estate to adapt the novel as a play and is developing it with members of Magis, the theatrical company he founded with friends from Columbia University, from which he holds an MFA in acting. The work will be presented as a staged reading in June at the summer leadership conference of Christians in Theatre Arts, which will be held in New York.

For the final version, Fr. Drance hopes to engage world-renowned puppeteer Ralph Lee to create puppets of the lizard and stallion featured in the book. He sees the piece opening with actors and audience members standing together in a dimly lit theater, waiting for the bus that will take them to heaven. The actors will then move to the brightly lit stage, which will have little to no scenery to better emphasize the people’s stories.

In the 128-page novel, Lewis makes a no-nonsense case for Christ as the only means of salvation, featuring a character who on earth had believed in universal salvation but is told by his spirit guide that that will not be the case. While Lewis’ works are especially popular with evangelical Christians, Fr. Drance does not consider the works conservative.

“His theology is sound without being self-righteous,” Fr. Drance said. “What he’s talking about in the work is really an examination of human nature rather than an examination of divine nature.”

In this he sees parallels with his Jesuit training.

“What I know of the discernment of spirits is from the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius and they’re about growing in awareness of ways in which the spirit of good moves and ways in which the spirit of evil moves. There are people in the story who could be case studies for various aspects of discernment.”

One of his favorite lines in the book comes from one of the spiritual guides: “We know nothing of religion here: We think only of Christ.”

“In the book, salvation is offered universally. What prevents people from accepting the invitation is entirely personal. It’s a timeless message.”

It’s also timely, Fr. Drance believes.

“We’re at a time of an incredible capacity for self-deception and incredible selfishness,” he said. “We’ve cultivated an ability to justify certain actions that cause so much misery for others in the name of protecting ourselves. That attitude is constantly challenged in this work. We’ve made the universe very small. The book asks us to consider it as vastly as God sees it.”

By RETTA BLANEY

[Check the Magis Theatre Company Website for updates!]

JUDY BRADFORD
Tribune Correspondent

Since its release in December by Disney, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” has exposed millions of children to the works of C.S. Lewis and his themes of spiritual darkness and the struggle toward light.

But for 20 years, Tom Key has explored those themes through his one-man show, “C.S. Lewis On Stage,” which he brought to the South Bend Christian Reformed Church on Sunday night.

A desk, a chair and a podium are all that Key needed to put the audience of about 200 in the presence of Lewis, a prolific and wildly witty author who also penned his autobiography, “Surprised by Joy,” published in 1955.

The show, with plenty of laughs, demonstrates Lewis’ contention that longing is joy and happiness. Our constant search for God, even in everyday, humdrum life, is the ultimate joy.

During the show, “Surprised by Joy” serves as a tool for narration and advancement, while Key takes side trips into Lewis’ other works including “The Great Divorce,” “Mere Christianity,” “The Problem of Pain” and “The Screwtape Letters” as well as his poetry.

This was largely an older audience. Many likely were first exposed to Lewis through “The Screwtape Letters,” where Lewis puts himself in the place of the devil and imagines what it would be like to connive against God, “the enemy.”

As if to satisfy them, Key delivers a lengthy and timeless monologue culled from the letters of Screwtape, a professional devil, to his nephew Wormwood — who is trying his best to perplex a human and steer him away from God.

One can’t help but pay attention to the allusions to war, which were relevant then, and are now.

“Pacifism or patriotism. … It doesn’t matter what the cause is, it would take his mind off prayers,” says Keys, delivering the devil’s advice with a heavy English accent and enthusiasm for debauchery.

Key makes grand use of the stage in the 75-minute show, and especially during a segment on The Great Divorce, where a man boards a bus to heaven and hell to witness the consequences of choices others have made in life.

His voices depicting either world become hilariously Monty Python-esque with their nonstop pace and extreme low and high intonations. But he pauses for humor and gets a self-knowing laugh from the audience with the line: “It’s all a clique up there, all a bloody clique up there.”

The use of Lewis’ autobiography takes the audience through Lewis’ most difficult years. He was tortured not only physically and intellectually but spiritually — which continues to make Lewis accessible to his readers, including devoted Christians. For them, the hardest part of the search may be over, but there is still work ahead.

Key’s monologue hints at the joy of struggle, the serendipitous moments that Lewis chalked up to fate, or to traps set by God to ensnare him initially into faith.

The monologue moves through explanations of Lewis’ physical handicap, a deformed thumb that disallowed sports such as baseball and led him to hold a pen instead.

It talks of his father, a man who never listened to his sons, in comparison to a private tutor who always listened to his students even while constantly correcting them.

The cruelties Lewis suffered under “The Bloods,” or athletes, in public school pushed him into compassion and forgiveness, and a logical acceptance of the mystery of pain.

“C.S. Lewis On Stage” was presented free of charge by South Bend Christian Reformed Church through a grant from the Lilly Foundation. Key has performed the show all over the world, from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to Oxford University, where Lewis once taught. Lewis died in 1963.