Less is more | 20 October 2007

Theatre: Shadowlands; Cat’s-Paw; Glengarry Glen Ross

Repressed Brits are on parade in Shadowlands. Author C.S. Lewis is portrayed as an emotional cripple who can’t bring himself to articulate his love for Joy Gresham, a sassy, super-intelligent American poet. Charles Dance is perfectly cast in the weird role of Lewis. With his stately, ruminative face and his air of embarrassment barely mastered, he looks like a befuddled giraffe performing good works in Africa. His eyes are just right too. Their expressive, pink-rimmed moistness makes him look as if he stopped weeping about ten minutes ago. And there’s great chemistry between him and Janie Dee as the besotted, endlessly patient Joy. William Nicholson’s script pokes gentle fun at Oxford in the 1950s. Gaggles of dowdy dons, led by the wonderful John Standing, are shown wearing an identical outfit of fading cords, check shirts and cardigans spotted with muffin crumbs and honey. They gather at high table every night to indulge in bitchy erudition and they’re outraged by the arrival of a smart American woman who’s not afraid to join in their clever-clogs dialectic.

The heart of this show is its examination of a particular type of English frigidity. But there’s a weakness here. Lewis’s reticence doesn’t escalate, it simply persists in different conditions. The most powerful moment comes right at the end when he finally admits he loves Joy even as he loses her. That cut right through me because Dance did exactly what Lewis would have done. Nothing. But then he decided to show us more. He heaved his shoulders. He lowed with pain. He crumpled up like a paper cup on a bonfire. And there he lost me, I’m afraid. He gave it everything. And the trick is to hold a little back and leave room for the audience to supply their feelings.