Now Playing

Shadowlands. This is a dignified, classy play, but for the most part, oddly lifeless. Set in 1950s England, it begins as C. S. Lewis, the creator of Narnia and a series of deeply Christian books for adults, gives a lecture on the topic of suffering, speculating that it must be a force intended by God to shape and perfect us. Shadowlands is biographical, based on the relationship between Lewis and poet Joy Gresham, who died of bone cancer, although the script takes a couple of liberties with fact and chronology. As the play opens, Lewis is in his fifties and Gresham and her young son, Douglas, blow like a bracing wind into his fusty, ordered, donnish world of tea and muffins. Nonetheless, this act is very static. Lewis and Gresham become friends. They take walks together; they sip tea. We're hoping for witty or insightful repartee. Surely these two writers left behind some bon mots and insights worth stealing in their books and papers? But most of the dialogue is disappointingly earnest and predictable, and the characters simply aren't very sharply delineated. Presented by Bas Bleu through January 7, 401 Pine Street, Fort Collins, 1-970-498-8949, www.basbleu.org. Reviewed December 1.