Star of
Bonekickers, Hugh Bonneville makes a rare venture to the stage in
Shadowlands, William Nicholson's play about Narnia author C.S. "Jack" Lewis, his late-blooming love life and the way it put to the test his Christian treatises on why god lets humans suffer. Lewis opens the play delivering a lecture on this theme, before returning to his fellow Oxford dons (Tony Jayawardena, Fode Simbo, Giles Taylor and Timothy Watson,) who see him as a poetry lecturer with a funny little sideline in children's books. He's also known for his arrested development as far as sex is concerned, a pious bachelor who lives with his brother W.H. (Jeff Rawle) and barely speaks to any women unless he's addressing the WI. He does, however, have a female pen-pal in Joy Davidman (Maggie Siff,) a married New York poet who heard of Lewis through her son's love of Narnia but started corresponding with him because of his religious writing.
