The Magician’s Wife

The Chronicles of Narnia author C. S. Lewis had quite an imagination for someone who led such a cloistered life. As a professor at Oxford University, Lewis, a devout Christian, lived in a world of academia and fanciful ideas, until one day real magic arrived on his doorstep in the form of Joy Gresham, a Jewish–American woman escaping from her abusive marriage. Gresham and Lewis eventually married and their relationship forever altered Lewis’s views about what it means to live, suffer, and love.

The influence of Joy on Lewis’s life and writing is the subject of William Nicholson’s play Shadowlands. First produced as a television movie in 1985, Shadowlands was later adapted for the stage and made into a film starring Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins. The Guthrie’s production, opening this month, also boasts some star power. Simon Jones, who starred in last year’s The Home Place, plays Lewis, and Charity Jones plays the sharp-as-a-tack Joy.

Simon Jones is thrilled to do the play, he says, having played Lewis before in a PBS production called The Question of God, which explored the relationship between Lewis and Sigmund Freud. While preparing for that film, Jones visited Lewis’s house and even held the great man’s pipe. Suffice it to say, Jones has been immersed in Lewis’s world for quite some time, and he’s ready to have a crack at it on the Guthrie stage.

“It’s a very effective piece of theater,” says Jones. “It’s hard to deal with issues like grief and bereavement. It’s odd because I like to see myself as a light comedian and for the second time at the Guthrie I’ll be doing a tragic part. Anyway, I have great faith that [director] Joe Dowling will lead me in the right direction.”

Nov. 1–Dec. 21. Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls. 612-377-2224