On May 21, Bob and I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake to see the Shaw production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series. I went with trepidation, because the Narnia series is very dear to my heart and I was afraid the stage production would ruin it for me, just as the Mirvish production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child managed to ruin Harry Potter. (My opinion only – the critics loved it!) But Shaw had a ticket sale – all seats $37 – and who doesn’t love a bargain?
The Toronto Star theatre critic was ruthless, giving the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe one star out of five. Joshua Chong describes it as a “dull and half-baked Narnia misfire that wastes its onstage talent and seemingly has no clue what it’s supposed to be.” He doesn’t like the choreography, he doesn’t like the characterization, he doesn’t like the costuming or the “drab and uninspiring” sets – especially the winter scenes which look like they were constructed out of long shreds of white fabric, to depict snow. (This is true.) He deplores the fact that “they’ve shoehorned in a random assortment of songs that neither serve the plot nor make much sense in the context of the story.” (This, too, is true). In fact, it is clear that he was less than impressed. I guess I’m not much of a discerning theatre critic, because despite his resounding thumbs down, I kind of enjoyed it, once I got over the fact that although there were certainly a Wardrobe and a Witch, there was no Lion.
That’s right – the Lion, Aslan, a central figure in the story, is totally absent. No attempt whatsoever was made to portray him in all his majesty as the mysterious, magnificent, powerful and benevolent Christlike figure he is. In this stage adaptation, Aslan was costumed as an ordinary man, simply clad in khaki shirt and pants – as unassuming and unimpressive a character as you could imagine. This was very disappointing, and hard to understand. In fact, it seemed to miss the entire point of the story. To explain this lack of “lion-ness”, the dialogue threw in the weak excuse that “Aslan appears as people want to see him”. A lame excuse if there ever was one, not true to the story, and a total departure from what the character of Aslan was meant to be. To me it looked like the creators of the show, the set designers and costumers, were too lacking in imagination to figure out how to bring the majestic Aslan to life on stage, and so decided not to even try. As a result, the climax of the play, the execution scene where Aslan sacrifices himself to save the human traitor Edmund, falls flat and does not have the impact it was meant to have.
For those of you who don’t know the story at all, the plot concerns four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, who, to keep them safe during the second world war, are evacuated out of London and sent to live with an eccentric old professor in his massive country estate. While there, they discover a huge old wardrobe, which magically transports them into the world of Narnia. All is not well in Narnia. The White Witch, who rules the country with a malevolent fist, has plunged the kingdom into a perpetual winter. The story tells of Narnia’s salvation, redemption, and transformation into a world of peace and beauty, where the four children fulfill the prophesies of old and grow to adulthood as Kings and Queens, ruling the land with mercy, justice and love.
The author of the series, Clive Staples Lewis, was an Irishman, born in Belfast in 1898 and who died in Oxford in 1963. He was a Medieval and Renaissance scholar, and as an adult convert to Christianity became a Christian writer of great influence. Much has been written about the Christian allegory in the Chronicles of Narnia, but C. S. Lewis did not set out to incorporate Christian theological concepts into his Narnia stories. That is something that occurred as he wrote them, and he did not hesitate to point them out after the fact.
My research led me through pages of extensive scholarly controversy about the Narnia series and its Christian allegory, with at least one writer stating outright that those who consider it a Christian allegory have got it all wrong. Many writers, both Christian and non-Christian, have serious objections to the pagan references – for example, the appearance of Bacchus during a pagan “romp”, as described in the fourth book of the series, Prince Caspian. Nevertheless, the Narnia books have a large Christian following and are often used to promote Christian ideas. To me the Christian allegory cannot be more clear. The salvation, redemption and reconciliation of Edmund by Aslan, an innocent victim who sacrifices himself on the Stone Table to save Edmund and then is restored to life, is an unmistakable example of the deep symbolic meaning I believe Lewis intended to convey throughout the Narnia series.
The Chronicles of Narnia have been dear to my heart throughout my life, from the age of eleven when I first read them. They occupy a prominent place in my library, which boasts two editions, and rank right up there with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as books I would want to have with me if I were marooned on a desert island. Both deal with the ongoing universal struggle between good and evil; in both, the “good” prevails and the world becomes a place of beauty, peace and justice, fulfilling in fantasy Christ’s vision for the world.
C. S. Lewis himself says this about the Narnian Chronicles: “The whole Narnian story is about Christ. That is to say, I asked myself ‘Supposing that there really was a world like Narnia and supposing it had (like our world) gone wrong and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it (as He did ours), what might have happened?’ The (Narnia) stories are my answers.”