THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By William Nicholson
Aldwych Theatre, 49 Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF until May 9, 2026
This warm and engaging revival, which first appeared in Chichester in 2019, has finally made it to the West End. It boasts clever star casting with Hugh Bonneville (forever the Earl of Grantham!) taking on the role of CS Lewis, in a part made famous by Joss Ackland in the original 1985 TV movie, Nigel Hawthorne in the West End and Broadway stage versions in 1989-91, and Anthony Hopkins in Richard Attenborough’s 1993 film, all hugely acclaimed. Maggie Siff, from TV’s Billions plays Joy Davidman, filling the footsteps of Claire Bloom and Debra Winger.
Lewis was one of the leading scholars of his era, an expert in medieval and Renaissance literature, but also a popular Christian apologist (considered almost as a saint by many) and a champion for a quite conservative religious outlook. He’s perhaps best known as a hugely successful children’s author, particularly the Narnia Chronicles, whose seven books are a Christian allegory framed as children’s stories.
This disconnect between Lewis the scholar and Lewis the popular evangelist was blown open when he met Davidman (Siff), an American writer. The relationship originated from fan letters which eventually led to her coming to England to meet him while escaping from a troubled marriage.
Nicholson’s story is great on the horror of Lewis’ confirmed bachelor friends at this usurper entering their ranks. Having fled the vitality of New York for the grayness of post war Oxford, they considered her abrasive, when all she was doing was outsmarting them and overturning their cozy, and essentially misogynist, little clique.
What makes the play remarkable is how it focuses on the joys of finding one’s soulmate late in life (“the sheer availability of happiness” as Lewis puts it) and while the play takes a lot of dramatic licence, its success lies in how it explores the difficult area of childhood grief and the loss of certainty it entails. The God that Lewis found so easy to explain in radio talks allowed his mother to die when he was 8. Then Joy was be taken from him too, dying in agony from bone cancer after only a few years together, leaving behind a young boy (in fact it was two). Here Ayrton English brings a gentle intelligence to young Douglas that will have you and most of the audience sobbing (he shares the part with two other young actors).
Devastated by his loss, Lewis begins to challenge his own faith and relationship with God. Bonneville, perfect as you’d imagine as the buttoned up ‘50s English gent, does wonders in slowly calibrating the evolution of Lewis from fusty confirmed bachelor to more fully rounded human being. Very slowly he emerges from his shell, letting Joy into his heart, and the eventual emotional collapse he suffers while comforting Douglas is beautifully handled, proving how grief crawls up on you, breaking you when you least expect it.
Siff too is wonderful as the wry, witty, New Yorker, capturing Joy’s quiet intelligence and totally engaging the audience so that her final moments become almost unbearable. Jeff Rawle provides solid support as ‘Warnie’, Lewis’s bachelor brother who lived with him but was much more emotionally attuned to Joy and Douglas’ needs than was CS.
Director Rachel Kavanaugh paces it perfectly, as the audience must be swept up. The design is lavish and Peter McKintosh’s enormous library set is as beautiful as it is imposing, with eloquent visual allusions too to the Narnia stories. Fergus O’Hare’s sound design perfectly enhances the mood of a piece which is dialogue heavy and often quite static.
The audience was held rapt throughout, proving that it’s a crowd-pleaser for the right reasons.
