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About the play
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was not C.S. Lewis’s first foray into the world of “children’s fantasy.” As a child, he and his brother Warnie had constructed the world of Boxen – a magical realm peopled with characters from his toys, the natural world, and his youthful reading. But the Narnia Chronicles and their popularity makes this work one of the most significant in both genres – fantasy and children’s literature. This first of seven Chronicles (fictive histories) tells of the adventures of the Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy – who enter the realm of Narnia through a portal in the Wardrobe of a country estate where they have been evacuated from a wartime London. Once in Narnia, they learn of the White Witch’s domination over the inhabitants; for 100 years she had made the world “always winter but never Christmas.” Soon the four find themselves caught in the Narnians’ struggle to overcome the Witch and join with the great lion, Aslan; they become the essential touchstones who help to reveal the need for, and the price of, the “deeper magic.”
Through the years between 1950 and 1956, Lewis expanded his Narnia through six other stories, Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), The Silver Chair (1953), The Horse and His Boy (1954), The Magician’s Nephew (1955), and The Last Battle (1956). And the popularity of the works remains astounding – they have sold over 100 million copies printed in at least 41 languages. While there have been numerous adaptations, cinematic renderings, and stage productions through the years, the 1998 RSC musical drama, written by Adrian Mitchell with music by Shaun Davey, remains widely acknowledged and admired. Meanwhile, Lewis’s Chronicles have had a powerful impact in the literary world as well. Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials has been avidly discussed as a response to the Narnian books. Graphic Novelist Neil Gaiman has written short stories derived from the Lewis works, as well as acknowledging their influence on his Sandman series. In Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, characters speak of their love of the Chronicles. And Narnia references and allusions have appeared in popular culture icons as diverse as “South Park”, “Lost”, and a host of graphic novels and anime.
About the author
Born Clive Staples Lewis on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, C.S. Lewis (known in the family as “Jack”) was the second of two sons for Augusta and Albert Lewis. The idyllic childhood world of Lewis and his elder brother, Warren (known as Warnie) was shattered by the death of their mother from cancer in 1908, and both were both packed off to private schools in England. In preparation for a potential academic career, Jack went to study privately with W.T. Kirkpatrick where he blossomed in Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, English literature and philosophy. By 1916 he had won a scholarship to University College, Oxford where he stayed until enlisting in 1917. Trained and commissioned as an officer in the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, Jack found himself on the front lines of the Somme on his 19th birthday. Wounded in the Battle of Arras (April 1918), Lewis recuperated and returned to his regiment to find that his fellow officer and close friend Paddy Moore had been killed in the conflict. This profound experience is recorded in his “Death in Battle” for Reveille magazine, his first publication.
In January of 1919, Lewis returned to University College and completed his studies in 1924 earning a First in Greek and Latin Literature (Honour Moderations) and a First in Philosophy and Ancient History (Greats). During the summer of that year, Lewis moved into a house with Paddy’s mother and sister. Shortly thereafter, Lewis purchased a home in the outskirts of Oxford together with the women and his brother. “The Kilns” would be where all four lived until Mrs. Moore’s death.
For a year following his graduation, Lewis served as philosophy tutor at University College before being elected as a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford where he taught English Language and Literature for 29 years. During those years, he experienced a spiritual transformation (from Theist to Christian in 1931) and an intellectual awakening through regular meetings with a circle of friends (including J.R.R.Tolkein, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Robert Havard, Owen Barfield, and others) known as “The Inklings.” They met 2-3 times a week in either Jack’s rooms or at “The Eagle and Child” pub to discuss their creative work as well as their political, moral and intellectual ideas. Lewis also began to publish; initially significant academic works such as The Allegory of Love, then Science Fiction – Out of the Silent Planet (the first of his trilogy), and then Christian apologetics (theology for the layman) The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity.
In addition to his populist writings, Lewis became a regular speaker for the BBC (on matters of faith) and a lecturer on the public circuits of intellectual and Christian Societies. In 1946, he was passed over for the Merton Professorship in English Literature; his public notoriety and acclaim did not endear him to the politics of the Oxford Colleges. By the outbreak of WWII, in addition to writing, teaching, and lecturing, Jack was caring daily for an ailing Mrs. Moore and hosting evacuees from the The Blitz.
The first of his seven Narnia Chronicles (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) appeared in 1950 and the final installment (The Last Battle) in 1956. In those years, Lewis dealt with the death of Mrs. Moore (1951), accepted the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdelene College, Cambridge (a position he kept until 1963), and became “involved” with an American poet and divorcee Joy Davidman.
To help establish her permanent residency in the UK, Lewis married Davidman in a secret civil ceremony in London (1956). Unfortunately, Joy developed bone cancer, but the trauma awakened Lewis to the depth of his romantic feelings for Davidman. They married in a church ceremony at her hospital bed in 1957. Joy went into remission for three years before succumbing to the illness in 1960. Lewis’ great classic, A Grief Observed, is the account of his spiritual and emotional suffering caused by her death. C.S. Lewis died November 22, 1963 (the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy). He is buried in Holy Trinity Chruch, Headington Quarry, Oxford.
Music composer Shaun Davey – is one of Ireland’s leading professional composers. In recent years he has composed and produced scores for the BBC TV series ‘Ballykissangel’, received an Ivor Novello award for his music for the BBC film ‘The Hanging Gale’, and composed and produced music for feature films such as ‘The Tailor of Panama’ and ‘Waking Ned’. In UK Theatre he has been composer to many Royal Shakespeare Company productions including The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1998-2002). His approach to composition is large scale and often features traditional [folk]. He is especially interested in a fusion of orchestral and Irish traditional. In 2007 he composed music to celebrate the arrival of a replica Viking longship in the National Museum of Ireland.
About the production
For director Mark Booher, his journey with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe began with a ticket to the 1998 RSC production that gave him a seat in the balcony surrounded by families and children enthusiastically embracing the magic of the story and the staging. While distance from such an experience might make the heart grow fonder for sentimental reasons, Booher said that what held his interest through the years was not merely the scope of the work, but the personal insights that the production allows each audience to discover. “Great stories are both macro and micro; a story such as this rings with authenticity because all of us need to be enchanted and all of us need to be rescued.” Booher added that while Lucy is the chosen protagonist – the one most innocent and most available for enchantment – each character (and audience member) can experience the journey, the power of courage coupled with compassion, and the need to find both the price and the power of moral choices.
Throughout the pre-production process, Booher has wanted to “read it like a storyteller, like a child, where all the elements have meaning.” In quoting Lewis’ biographer Alan Jacobs, he observes, “When we can no longer be ‘wide open to glory’ – risking whatever immaturity thereby – we have not only just lost our childlikeness but something near the core of our humanity. Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and that is a great and grievous loss.”
Some of the initial staging choices for this production will emphasize the compartmentalization of the Pevensies’ lives so that as the “magic door” to Narnia opens, we can experience the rescue from the chaos and turmoil of ordinary life, a delivery from entrapment and isolation. In this production Booher also plans to capture for the audience “the delight of being swept into a great story,” and the hope that each audience “will keep their eyes open for other worlds that are just around the corner.”
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