Shadowlands: William Nicholson’s 1990 play (made into a movie in 1993) receives a thoughtful and satisfying revival from Fellowship for Performing Arts. C. S. Lewis (Daniel Gerroll), the noted Christian theologian, Oxford professor, and Narnia author, opens the show by delivering a lecture full of moral and spiritual conundrums. Next, he’s engaging in comfortably donnish discourse with his peers. Into this tweedy world, where women are mostly a theoretical construct, bursts Joy Davidman (Robin Abramson), a New York poet and a fan of Lewis’s writing, travelling with her young son. With her straightforward, steely intellect—and the occasional well-placed zinger—she not only holds her own in conversation with Lewis and his stodgy colleagues but begins an unexpected love affair. Under Christa Scott-Reed’s direction, the excellent cast (also including John C. Vennema and Sean Gormley) catches every nuance of this fine play.

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