JUDY BRADFORD
Tribune Correspondent
Since its release in December by Disney, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” has exposed millions of children to the works of C.S. Lewis and his themes of spiritual darkness and the struggle toward light.
But for 20 years, Tom Key has explored those themes through his one-man show, “C.S. Lewis On Stage,” which he brought to the South Bend Christian Reformed Church on Sunday night.
A desk, a chair and a podium are all that Key needed to put the audience of about 200 in the presence of Lewis, a prolific and wildly witty author who also penned his autobiography, “Surprised by Joy,” published in 1955.
The show, with plenty of laughs, demonstrates Lewis’ contention that longing is joy and happiness. Our constant search for God, even in everyday, humdrum life, is the ultimate joy.
During the show, “Surprised by Joy” serves as a tool for narration and advancement, while Key takes side trips into Lewis’ other works including “The Great Divorce,” “Mere Christianity,” “The Problem of Pain” and “The Screwtape Letters” as well as his poetry.
This was largely an older audience. Many likely were first exposed to Lewis through “The Screwtape Letters,” where Lewis puts himself in the place of the devil and imagines what it would be like to connive against God, “the enemy.”
As if to satisfy them, Key delivers a lengthy and timeless monologue culled from the letters of Screwtape, a professional devil, to his nephew Wormwood — who is trying his best to perplex a human and steer him away from God.
One can’t help but pay attention to the allusions to war, which were relevant then, and are now.
“Pacifism or patriotism. … It doesn’t matter what the cause is, it would take his mind off prayers,” says Keys, delivering the devil’s advice with a heavy English accent and enthusiasm for debauchery.
Key makes grand use of the stage in the 75-minute show, and especially during a segment on The Great Divorce, where a man boards a bus to heaven and hell to witness the consequences of choices others have made in life.
His voices depicting either world become hilariously Monty Python-esque with their nonstop pace and extreme low and high intonations. But he pauses for humor and gets a self-knowing laugh from the audience with the line: “It’s all a clique up there, all a bloody clique up there.”
The use of Lewis’ autobiography takes the audience through Lewis’ most difficult years. He was tortured not only physically and intellectually but spiritually — which continues to make Lewis accessible to his readers, including devoted Christians. For them, the hardest part of the search may be over, but there is still work ahead.
Key’s monologue hints at the joy of struggle, the serendipitous moments that Lewis chalked up to fate, or to traps set by God to ensnare him initially into faith.
The monologue moves through explanations of Lewis’ physical handicap, a deformed thumb that disallowed sports such as baseball and led him to hold a pen instead.
It talks of his father, a man who never listened to his sons, in comparison to a private tutor who always listened to his students even while constantly correcting them.
The cruelties Lewis suffered under “The Bloods,” or athletes, in public school pushed him into compassion and forgiveness, and a logical acceptance of the mystery of pain.
“C.S. Lewis On Stage” was presented free of charge by South Bend Christian Reformed Church through a grant from the Lilly Foundation. Key has performed the show all over the world, from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to Oxford University, where Lewis once taught. Lewis died in 1963.
