Narnia takes to the Canadian stage – again

By Sue Careless

WHILE SEVERAL of The Chronicles of Narnia have appeared on the silver screen, two of C.S. Lewis’ beloved Narnian tales have recently been performed live on Canadian boards. And so successfully that a third production is in the works.

Two of Canada’s premier repertory theatres have tackled Narnia. Last year Tim Carroll directed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the Stratford Festival to great critical acclaim and popular delight.

This year Carroll directed The Magician’s Nephew at the Shaw Festival. It got off to a slow start at the box office but ticket sales grew.

The Globe and Mail drama critic J. Kelly Nestruck knocked Michael O’Brien’s “workmanlike adaptation” and the introduction of “some unnecessary framing devices” but by the second act said the play had gained a “certain enchanting majesty.” And he admitted the elementary-school children at the same performance he saw “seemed rapt.” The Magician’s Nephew runs until Oct. 13th in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Shaw has announced that next year it will stage an adaptation of another Narnian tale, the third in the series, The Horse and His Boy. It will have a new director, Christine Brubaker, and a new playwright, Anna Chatterton.

Nestruck noted that “Just as young-adult fiction has become the backbone of publishing, young-adult drama has become one of the few genres of new plays that can find commercial success these days.”

With these prestigious Ontario theatres stepping into Narnia, perhaps other companies across the country will also consider staging some of the seven Narnian tales. There is certainly plenty of material to mine.

While some may be disappointed that the adaptations on both stage and screen are not faithful enough to the books of the great twentieth-century Christian apologist, there is always the hope that such productions will introduce new generations to C.S. Lewis’ work as they turn the pages of Narnia for themselves.  TAP