Reviews of Shadowlands starring Hugh Bonneville – Aldwych Theatre, London

"Hugh Bonneville is devastating as CS Lewis in his return to the West End"

"This moving revival of William Nicholson’s Shadowlands turns a love story into a powerful exploration of grief, illness and shaken faith"

"William Nicholson’s Shadowlands, an affecting drama about CS Lewis and the American poet Joy Davidman, is back in the West End."

"Hugh Bonneville is... a star draw. He may lack the clenched, repressed intensity that Anthony Hopkins brought to the 1993 Bafta-winning film, but his portrayal of the children’s author and scholar is imbued with a down-to-earth decency that casts its own spell."

"With excellent work too from American actress Maggie Siff as the sparkily intelligent Joy, an uncommon romance blighted by cancer takes on the hue of bittersweet universal experience."

"Given the economy of the script, with the donnish, chauvinist world of Fifties Oxford sketched but little embellished, it could all veer into a superficial, episodic résumé. Yet Rachel Kavanaugh’s stylish production (first seen in Chichester, pre-pandemic) lends the story the vital, unifying aura of a restless, soulful quest."

"Perhaps we could do with more touches of incisive intellect to answer the cerebral charm that Siff, in an increasingly stirring performance, conjures."

"... [Bonneville] gives a commendably un-egotistical performance that provides a potent conduit for our own experiences of deep personal loss. Bonneville hasn’t undertaken a major play in London since 2004. He is eminently welcome back."

"Downton's Hugh Bonneville on a journey of heartbreak and hope"

"You can bank on Hugh Bonneville. He is a warm, solid incarnation of bashful, faintly grumpy Britishness. The cuddly star of Downton and Paddington sets you up for the day like a full English breakfast."

"Yet the real star of this West End transfer of Chichester Festival Theatre’s 2019 revival of William Nicholson’s biographical drama is Maggie Siff"

"Unashamedly pondering such big questions, the play does so with thoughtful wit and, astonishingly in Rachel Kavanaugh’s nostalgic production, a modest amount of spectacle."

"... while Bonneville is a dependable old stick in whom we trust, as we join him on his journey through faith and despair, it’s Siff he has to thank for lighting up both his character and the stage.

"Next stop Broadway?"

"Hugh Bonneville as CS Lewis deserves his ovations"

"The actor gives a shrewdly understated performance, finding the turmoil inside a public figure struggling to reconcile his beliefs with a personal catastrophe"

"If the new Archbishop of Canterbury needs a spot of encouragement in these turbulent times, she might take comfort in the fact that an old-school, well-made play about a Christian intellectual can still find an audience in the West End."

"... it helps that Rachel Kavanaugh’s elegant revival of William Nicholson’s drama about CS Lewis has a star as bankable as Hugh Bonneville"

"Bonneville certainly deserved the acclaim he received at the end of the evening: this was a shrewdly understated performance that hinted at the turmoil stirring inside a public figure"

"Kavanaugh’s production... is suave and ungimmicky."

"The whole play motors along pretty briskly, in fact, and you’d scarcely guess that Lewis and Davidman actually had three years together after her illness went into remission."

"[Maggie Siff] is a winning presence as Joy, a self-sufficient, footloose mother intent on building a new life in a foreign country."

"Howard Harrison’s shifting lighting always seems to remind us that the line separating the here and now from eternity is a thin one."

"Hugh Bonneville in Shadowlands will truly move you"

"Which story offers a greater depiction of love: 'Wuthering Heights' or 'Shadowlands'? For me, it's the latter"

"William Nicholson’s gently magnificent 1989 drama... returns in style to the West End"

"... Bonneville has cornered the market in an elegant brand of reserved English decency and Lewis is a fine addition to the collection."

"The key to getting the balance of Shadowlands just right is that Lewis must not underplay the transformation going on in his inner life, nor Davidman overplay her breath-of-fresh-air schtick."

"When Rachel Kavanaugh’s production premiered at Chichester in 2019, I commented that Bonneville needed to dig deeper to reach the eviscerating levels of emotion that Anthony Hopkins brought to the part in the acclaimed 1993 film. He does that here"

"He is perfectly matched by Siff as a forthright but self-aware woman conscious of the fact that she needs to tread delicately in matters of the heart."

"Sanitised production can’t capture the darker realities of mortality"

"Hugh Bonneville brings plenty of affable charm to his role as the ‘Narnia’ author CS Lewis, but it’s an unstintingly mild-mannered performance in a deeply joyless play"

"Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Paddington) brings plenty of affable charm to this devout, emotionally repressed character, but neither this sanitised production nor his unstintingly mild-mannered performance can capture the darker realities of grief, sex and mortality."

"... if you can resist the temptation to be cynical, these early scenes are pretty charming. Siff captures all the gauche impulsivity of a woman who set sail from New York just to take tea with her literary idol, and who carries her poems inside her like an unexploded bomb"

"Rachel Kavanaugh’s production injects little notes of magic... But there’s still something deeply joyless about this play’s reluctance to show the couple actually being happy together"

"There are audiences who’ll lap it all up as an emotive alternative to a church sermon, but they deserve better. Real life is much more complicated than the fridge magnet quote-worthy moralising that fills this play’s later scenes, and an author with the imaginative power to turn God into a friendly lion would have understood that."

"Hugh Bonneville is a charming CS Lewis in this sweet but simplistic period romance"

"I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever heard proper walk-on applause in this country before. But the Shadowlands audience erupted as soon as star Hugh Bonneville walked out on stage."

"... it’s emblematic of Bonneville’s peculiarly English middle aged charm that the role that’s getting his base so hot under the collar is that of the extremely low thirst CS Lewis."

"... it’s largely delightful, not an odd couple meet cute, but a story about a genuine, real connection between two somewhat lost souls."

"It’s an elegant, elegiac play blessed with two extremely watchable performances. Siff’s brittle, vulnerable charisma is extremely winning. And Bonneville is a delight"

"... Bonneville’s Lewis feels like an absurd fantasy of somebody whose rare gifts (and to be fair, childhood trauma) have separated him from worldly concerns."

"Rachel Kavanaugh’s production is a very elegant thing"

"... it’s high class MOR, a chaste romantic fantasy that plays great with the Bonneville stans but is lacking a layer of depth. Still, even if I couldn’t exactly believe in the couple, I could still root for them."

"Heart-warming, but lacks punch"

"Exploration of literary giant CS Lewis’ late-life romance with Joy Davidman is charming, but lacks bite"

"There’s something endearing about watching a man of CS Lewis’ seniority, rigorous intellect and literary accomplishment succumb to a late-life romantic relationship like a teenager falling in love for the first time."

"In Rachel Kavanaugh’s production of William Nicholson’s 1989 play, originally seen at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2019, it’s also sanitised, streamlined and given something of a romcom treatment."

"This West End revival carries TV star Hugh Bonneville into Theatreland with it. He’s charming in the role of Lewis"

"Kavanaugh’s production sometimes feels staid"

"Rose-tinted, it all lacks punch; but it’s a heart-warming watch."

"There’s comfort in an old-fashioned, well-made play and when Hugh Bonneville steps forward at the beginning of Shadowlands and starts to speak, there’s a sense of reassurance, of a good story about to be told."

"William Nicholson’s 1989 play... is a good story, fluently expressed."

"Nicolson’s play, adapted from a television film and later made into a movie, is expertly directed by Rachel Kavanaugh... But she cannot disguise the way it skates along the surface of multiple moral dilemmas."

"... as evidenced by years of starring in Downton Abbey, Bonneville is an actor who can tease feeling and nuance out of the most straightforward script. He’s wonderful as Lewis, awkward and endearing, but also catching the man’s self-righteousness stuffiness"

"The detail of his portrayal is matched by Maggie Siff’s Joy."

"Its theology and its psychology don’t stand up to too much scrutiny, but like the fruit cake its characters eat over endless teas, it is satisfying while it lasts."

"Hugh Bonneville charms in a weepie that’s as creaky as an old library"

"William Nicholson’s take on CS Lewis’s marriage to an American divorcee should have you in bits but it fails to feel as eviscerating as it should"

"In all its iterations, it is an old-fashioned weepie. In this production, originally staged at Chichester Festival theatre, it just feels old-fashioned."

"It has charm and pulls you into its sadness but seems as creaky as the half-filled, wood-panelled library in its backdrop. There is too much a sense of a drama unfolding"

"Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, it plods from one scene to the next, sleepy in pace and action but breezy in its emotions. The loves story seems to sit apart from the thoughts on faith and suffering that Lewis voices at university podium lectures."

"Bonneville is a lovely presence, as always, and he certainly knows how to play emotionally reserved Englishmen"

"Siff is excellent as Joy, bringing sharp edges and ardour but the chemistry between them is just too fond and gentle."

"There are some scenes that penetrate, especially the exhilarating moment that Lewis and Joy declare their love for each other"