Shadowlands

For some reason reading about the days and hours before the crucifixion reminds me of Shadowlands. Maybe it's all the pain and bitter weeping and crown of thorns and love even though it sometimes makes no sense.
So indulge me for a minute while I ramble on about the Shadowlands play our school put on.
First of all, Ben and I both agree, it was much better than the Anthony Hopkins movie. I mean go Cannible and Silence of the Lambs, but the movie Shadowlands didn't quite have the element of really understanding quite what this whole Shadowlands thing is about.
Shadowlands, my friend, is this life. "Only shadows, Jack."
Jack was glorious. The lovely fellow who played him actually shaved the top of his head as if to look bald, which I only noticed the second time. Bravo, my good man. His portrayal of Jack Lewis was spectacular. The slightly gruff voice fits with my recolection of C.S. Lewis reading The Four Loves I have on tape. The slight limp retells the days of the war when he had a little shrapnel in his leg...I think. I could be mixing my heroes. He was slightly bent over, however he had this spirit of curiousity that I always thought the little Lewis had in him. What women my age would call a "cute old man curiousity".
Joy I wasn't so sure about. Of course, I never really got a feel for her through Lewis' books anyway. Every time I'd read about her, through Surprised by Joy or even through William Nicholson, it was pretty much through the eyes of Lewis. Which, of course, is biased, being in love and all.
The "Jewish Communist American Christian" from New York said "Okay" a lot and after saying slighlty outrageous and possibly awkward statements to Jack she'd say, "Is that okay?" or "If that's okay with you, Jack." I feel like I should be saying stuff like that...seems like communication would be better.
Throughout the play they had a wardrobe in the middle that Douglas (then around 10 years old) would run to. First, when Jack and Joy first met and had tea, Douglas ran to the wardrobe that lit up and opened and had a tree in it. Douglas walked in and the scene changed. Second, the wardrobe lit up and opened when Joy was sick. Douglas ran in, found a fruit on a tree, and brought it back to put in his mother's hand.
The significance of this is huge. The Magician's Nephew had just come out, and Douglas carried it everywhere. He even had it with him when Joy and Jack first met over tea, and asked Jack to sign it. Jack wrote "Magic never ends."
Joy fell right before the intermission. She got sick, and eventually died. All she did with the fruit Douglas picked off the tree in the wardrobe was set it on the bedside table in her hospital room.
When Joy died, poor Jack was embittered and questioning why God would do such a thing. You can read about it in A Grief Observed. Whoever wrote this play was a genius and well versed in the various literature, for they quoted something in A Grief Observed. Lewis told his bother Warnie sometime after the funeral that he couldn't even see Joy's face. Warnie asked Jack what he would do about Douglas, since he was his father by marriage. Jack went to talk to Douglas and they cried. It was touching in the play but more so in the movie. Oh Hopkins, what a crier.
At the beginning, after the intermission, and here at the end after Jack and Douglas grieved together, Jack Lewis spoke a certain lecture he had spoken many times before. He incorporated every time the idea and, quite frankly, the fact that we are all like blocks of stone that the sculputer looks at and hits with his chisel. While the blows are painful, Lewis said, they are what makes us perfect.
When he said this for the third time at the end, he turned his body to face another part of the stage (I'm sure it has a fancy name for people who are actors and understand that it means he is talking to another audience) and spoke to Joy. He said "Sometimes, when I'm calm, I can see you walking toward me..." And he went on for a few seconds about it.
Then music swelled and Douglas came running to Jack, took his hand, and they faced the Wardrobe. It opened, and Joy was standing there. Jack and Douglas walked into the wardrobe with Joy, they turned to the inside, and looked up.
HOLY CRAP Heaven, anyone?
Seriously, I don't think anyone really understood that signified Heaven.
After the actors came out and bowed they all turned to the wardrobe and looked up.
SUCH A LEWIS/NARIA MOVE!!!!!!
So that was awesome. It's like it was all pointing, through Jack and Joy's relationship, to the Lord. To the God who makes all of this possible. To the King who saves us from sure death.
And the magic never ends, right?
We think the whole thing is that magic was paralleled to spirituality. Which makes sense.

Highlights other than the above:
-the banter between Jack and his group of friends, consisting of a reverend, an athiest, his brother Warnie, and a few others.
-scene changes were awesome. of course, to keep it simple, the stage was the same throughout, with the exception of moving a few chairs here and a bookcase there. but with the help of different lighting and context clues those who were keeping up understood that even though they walked from Lewis' living room to the side of the stage where some guys in moving uniforms brought out a box and a shelf, they were changing houses, going from Lewis' to Joy's new house, as Lewis helped her unpack.
-when Jack and Joy were on their honeymoon, Joy said that "the happiness now is just part of the pain later." And when Jack was talking to her at the end before he and Douglas ran to her in the wardrobe he said "the pain now is just part of the happiness later." Which was so fitting for running to Heaven and being with her.
-also, before Joy got sick, the reverend and the athiest were talking about prayer, and Jack walked up and said "I pray all the time. It's not so much for God as it is for me." And he said some other things, to which the athiest commented was the most sensible thing he'd heard on the matter. However I can't remember what Jack said. It was true though. Wish I had that script.


Man. Tears and chill bumps all around.