Stuffed Prig for Desert

I recently went to see the Water Street Theatre's production of "Shadowlands", the play by William Nicholson, about the love affair between an aging C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist, and an American poet, Joy Grescham.

I like the Water Street Theatre. We've been subscribers for about three years now. It is a dedicated little professional theatre company that operates in a small space (about 200 seats) and maintains a high level of polish in their productions. If they have one weakness, however, it is that almost all of their productions lack the fire, the spark, the intangible element that brings good theatre to life. First-rate theatre companies find this spark about half the time. Community theatre groups are lucky if it strikes once in two years. One of the luckiest plays is Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream"-- it seems to weave it's own magic. The Water Street Theatre, however, has never found it. I don't know why it eludes them. There is something about the composition of the company, the combination of actors and directors and scripts that just doesn't work.

For one thing, Theatre and Company takes bigger risks than most community theatre groups, but never take a really big risk. For another thing, they occasionally do something really dumb. And one of the dumbest things they do, about once a year, is a British play, in accent.

I think most fourteen-year-olds with a minor interest in theatre know that you should never do an accent unless you can do it well. Alan Sapp, who played C.S. Lewis in "Shadowlands" can't do it. Not even close. In fact, embarrassingly distant. I don't think he uttered a single compound sentence all night without wavering back and forth, between British and Canadian. The result was like watching Tonya Harding skate: sure, she's got the training and the outward skills, but she can't hide the trailer park make-up or the bingo-hall manners.

The accent wasn't the only problem. Sapp was surrounded by actors, good ones, who knew timing and intonation and rhythm, and proved over and over again that he didn't. And in scenes with Linda Bush as the dying Joy Gresham, he displayed all the warmth and sensitivity of a buccaneer. He emoted towards the audience mostly.

One of the reviews tacked up in the theatre lobby claimed that the only good thing about the second act was Sapp's brilliant performance. I think this reviewer confused style with substance here. Sapp raised his arms often and gestured towards the audience and hammered away at his lines like a good thespian should. But none of it belonged in the play. There was a dying woman on the bed, but Mr. Sapp might as well have been standing on a soapbox, or a pulpit.

I never liked C.S. Lewis, and I never understood why he was so popular with Christians. He was really a stuffed shirt, a prig, and he held archaic views on almost everything. The charm of his Narnia stories has always eluded me, and as an apologist for Christianity, none of his ideas were new or particularly convincing.

April 16, 1998