The Great Divorce

Tony Lawton has adapted C.S. Lewis' novella, The Great Divorce, into an 80-minute, solo performance.

The play is the story of Clive, who, along with a motley crew of malcontents, takes a bus ride from hell to heaven. They are offered a chance to stay in heaven forever if they like, but the choice between joy and miserable loneliness proves to be much harder than they would have guessed. The piece is a feast of rich language, profound psychological insight, and humor.

Lawton performs the play, portraying more than a dozen characters. This is the simplest and most portable of the Mirror's offerings, which is probably why it is the cheapest and most popular! Lawton can perform the play with as little as one day's notice, in spaces as varied as a theatre, gymnasium, meeting room, or living room! All we require from you is a stool, about 3-4 feet high, preferably wood, with no backrest.

PRESS REVIEWS:

Masterful solo show of a C.S. Lewis tale

By Toby Zinman (Philadelphia Inquirer Critic, '08)
For The Inquirer
Location, location, location. Where are we? In a dingy town or a radiant abyss? Earth? Hell? Heaven? Life? Death? "And terror whispered, 'This is no place for you.' " Anthony Lawton's masterful solo show, The Great Divorce, adapted from C.S. Lewis' allegorical novel, creates location after location - all on a gray stage, wearing gray clothes, with a gray face.
   It begins, as many good stories do, on a dark and stormy night. A sensible-sounding man who has been walking endlessly but arriving nowhere joins a group of quarrelsome strangers waiting for a bus. The bus, not unlike E.M. Forster's Celestial Omnibus, is magical, flying through the air from this hell on Earth to a surprising heaven. The man meets a variety of ghosts, as well as giant angels who speak with Scottish accents.
   The characters - from the whining, misunderstood poet to the self-righteous, husband-crushing wife, to the "plain man" who only wants "his rights," to the outraged cynic who sees the wonders of the world as a series of tourist traps, to the degenerate tormented by his own lustful inclination in the shape of a small red reptile - all come to life through Lawton's voice.
   Much of what is remarkable about Lewis' story is the narrative detail: Life has been closely observed - birds, clouds, flowers, people's faces - and he can create spectacular images by painting with language on the mind's canvas. Each of us in the audience sees what we see according to our needs and our imaginations, from the unpluckable, diamond-hard daisy to the "man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air." Lewis' old-fashioned, very literary vocabulary springs to life, making us contemplate astronomical distances so great they "made the solar system itself seem an indoor affair."
   Much of what is remarkable about Lawton's performance is the detail - the bend of a knee, the raising of an eyebrow, the roll of an R - all the theatrical shape-shifting actors do that becomes part of the larger point: The actor himself seems both more and less than corporeal, "a man-shaped stain," an individual human as well as the human condition.
  Reprising his performance of 2006, Lawton clearly intends this as a show for the season: a deeply spiritual investigation into human behavior and moral responsibility. New Year's resolutions cubed.
   But the play is entertaining as well as thought-provoking. Consider this adorable zinger: "Who will give me the words to express the terror of that discovery? Golly."
   The difference between this performance and the one I saw two years ago (dimmed by time and cluttered memory) is that now it feels less optimistic, less an assertion of a redemption, of a person's capacity to learn from an epiphany, a revelatory dream, a philosophic inquiry. It seems merely to assert the necessity of self-renovation, not to declare the deal done.
   Lewis, a philosopher best known for his allegorical Chronicles of Narnia books for children, was a convert from atheism to devout Christianity, which may be one of the many possible meanings of the title The Great Divorce.
PERFECT UNION
by David Anthony Fox (Philadelphia City Paper, '08)
It's the most basic recipe for theater there is: a bare stage, an actor and a story. On the Lantern Theater stage, the actor is Anthony Lawton. The story — a ghost story, really — is C.S. Lewis' parable The Great Divorce. And the result is magic.
The actor first. Tony Lawton is a mainstay of Philly stages, and we're very lucky. I've seen him in more plays than I can count, and he's never given an uninteresting performance. Quite the contrary: In a huge range of work (drama and comedy, contemporary and classical, playing characters sinister and likable), he's varied, intelligent and often — as in Lonesome West last year, also at Lantern, where he is given some of his best opportunities — absolutely riveting. A few years ago, I would have characterized Lawton's acting as notable for a sly, unsettling raffishness — there was always a twinkle, but something a little destabilizing lay underneath. Like all of us, Lawton has gotten older. But as an actor, it's only made him more interesting. The boyishness is still there, and so — when necessary — is the danger. And like all great actors, he is in masterful control. But now, Lawton shows a new level of experience, tinged with mournfulness. It's these qualities that emerge through so strikingly when the lights come up on him, ashen-faced, eyebrows fixed tragic-comically, as he begins narrating.
Now the story. A group of people, not obviously connected, find themselves bus-bound one rainy night on a long ride that has no clear purpose or destination. Though Lewis provides some context — on one level, Divorce takes place in Britain during the dark days of World War II — it becomes gradually clearer that the setting is metaphoric, the characters ghostly shadows shuttling between heaven and hell. This journey — "vacation," as Lewis dryly puts it — is a test of character, even a lesson in "goodness." Those who know Lewis only through his Chronicles of Narnia novels might be surprised by the wry and very adult themes here, though they will recognize the underlying Christian allegory.
Lawton has done the adaptation himself, and one of the great joys is his way with the charmingly archaic prose. He serves as narrator as well as playing the various characters, each of whom is delineated by skillful body language and accents — but to me, the greater exhibition of virtuosity is the way he can create a vivid visual picture from the slightest play of textual emphasis and facial expression. From the quiet, seemingly casual beginning to the unforgettable final moments, Lawton has us in the palm of his hand. For Philadelphia audiences, The Great Divorce is unmissable, and a celebration of the very happy marriage between Tony Lawton and Lantern Theater. Let's hope for many anniversaries to come.

The power of change in 'Great Divorce'
Toby Zinman
Philadelphia Inquirer Critic (2006)

   Now this is storytelling. Anthony Lawton holds us rapt -- you can feel the intensity of the audience's attention -- with his masterful performance in The Great Divorce, the actor's own adaptation of the C.S. Lewis novel of the same name. Lantern Theater first presented this impressive show a year ago, and the timing of this reprise, for a brief run between the holidays, seems particularly right.
   The Great Divorce is a show for the new year, although certainly not a conventionally cheery, champagney one. Steeped in Christian theology, as most of Lewis' fiction is (he is best known for his Chronicles of Narnia books for children), this philosophical allegory is about new beginnings and moral decisions and life-altering resolutions.
   A man finds himself waiting for a bus with a group of quarrelsome strangers. The night is dark, the company is nasty, and the town is somehow surreal. he boards the bus for a journey from this Hell to a surprising Heaven, where he will meet a variety of ghosts -- "man-shaped stains on the bright air" -- and angels who speak with Scottish accents.
   Each character -- the self-righteous, husband-crushing wife; the "plain man" who only wants his "rights"; the cruel boss; the outraged cynic who sees the world as a tourist trap; the degenerate tormented by his own lustful inclination in the shape of a small red lizard -- comes to life through Lawton's voice as he walks that fine line between the dramatic and the narrative. He brings the old-fashioned, very literary vocabulary to life, making us contemplate "astronomical distances" so great they "made the solar system itself seem and indoor affair."
   Lighting a show about symbolic darkness and the "radiant abyss" is no small task, and Janet Embree's lighting, especially at the end, is very effective.
   Lawton, his face painted a Beckett-clown white, armed onstage with nothing more than backdrop draperies and a stool, transforms himself, first into the man imagining all this, and then into the variety of people and creatures the man encounters in his dark-night-of-the-soul dream.
   These theatrical transformations echo the spiritual transformations Lewis is writing about, making the decision to adapt The Great Divorce to the stage an appropriate and meaningful choice rather than an arbitrary indulgence. Performance literalizes the figurative; it shows us how a man can change.

One man, but many characters, expounding on the route to heaven
Douglas J. Keating
Philadelphia Inquirer Critic (2005)

   The narrator of The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis takes a strange bus ride that sends him from a dreary, rainy city of eternal twilight up through the cloud-laden sky to a place of eternal light and the promise of better things to come. Yes, we are talking about a journey from hell, which looks pretty much like Earth at its most dismal, to heaven -- or at least the entry to paradise. But the simple, fantastical structure is deceptive. Although Lewis wrote the still-popular Narnia Chronicles for youngsters, The Great Divorce, which local actor Anthony Lawton has adapted and is presenting in a solo show produced by Lantern Theater, is hardly a fanciful children's story about a bus that flies. Instead, it's a piece in which the foremost literary Christian apologist of the last century puts forth his opinion of what it may take for a person to enter the kingdom of heaven.
   That's Lewis' ultimate purpose, but he conveys his religious views in such evocative, observant writing, and Lawton does such of fine job of presenting the many characters and emotions of the story, that even those who are not in sympathy with Lewis' beliefs should find The Great Divorce engrossing theatre. (The running time, just over an hour, also helps.)
   Lewis contends that to enter heaven, a person must acknowledge and shed the bad behavior that made others on Earth unhappy. It's a very Christian view of confession, redemption and rebirth, but Lewis also makes it clear that one needn't wait till the heavenly gates come into view. One can and should try to change in this life.
   By showing flawed humans unwilling to alter their ways, even though it means they are denied entrance to heaven, Lewis demonstrates graphically how difficult -- nay, nearly impossible -- it is for people to change. It's a sobering view that feeds into the deeply felt Christian despair that Lewis evokes in the final moments of the story.
   Lawton has adapted other works by Lewis to the stage, and his affinity for the author's views informs and deepens his always intense acting style. He presents the many characters of the piece colorfully. They have a real individuality and provide a sense of the lonely separation from others that Lewis sees as inherent to the human condition.
   If excellent, passionate performance in the cause of Christian doctrine can get an actor to heaven's entry, Lawton has a place waiting for him on Lewis' bus.

A C.S. Lewis adaptation
Julia M. Klein
Philadelphia Inquirer Critic (1998)

   The Mirror Theatre Company, which is presenting an original adaptation of C.S. Lewis' fabulist novel The Great Divorce, is really Anthony Lawton
   That may be all you need to know: The Temple-educated Lawton, apparently recovered from his 24-hour stint in Brat Productions' The Bald Soprano, authored this adaptation and is its only performer. In the best tradition of one-man shows, Lawton (in white face) quickly makes us forget that he is only one man. Adopting a range of British accents and demeanors, he sharply portrays a variety of characters -- including, most memorably, a woman who makes her husband's life a living hell.
   Lawton describes the piece as "the journey of Clive, a hapless professor, who takes a bus ride from hell to heaven" -- and who then must decide whether to stay. The truth is, both the geography and iconography of Lewis' fantastical world are somewhat difficult to comprehend on first viewing.
   Even as Lawton immerses us deeply in Lewis' utopian and dystopian imaginings, we struggle to situate ourselves, both spatially and morally. The nearest parallel I could summon was to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which other-worldly visions also serve didactic, Christian ends.
   However tangled the story's threads, Lawton is mesmerizing -- fully deserving the standing ovation he received Tuesday night.

Destination: Heaven

DAN ROTTENBERG

    Amid a thundering rainstorm, a wretched academician finds himself alone in a deserted town whose center seems unreachable no matter how long he walks toward it, because the town’s selfish inhabitants are constantly expanding its boundaries by moving to its outer limits in order to avoid each other. The scene could be America’s atomized suburbs of 2007, where everyone gets what they want (except a community) and everyone wonders why they’re unhappy; in fact, it’s C.S. Lewis’s 1946 vision— part Dante, part Kafka, part Freud— of the afterlife as a place where souls are condemned to heaven or hell not by God but by their own psychological baggage. Here the departed are free to move back and forth between the physical heaven and hell— since, after all, some folks are miserable even in Paris while others find joy even in Detroit.

    This adaptation of the Lewis novel, brilliantly conceived and performed by Anthony Lawton, vividly evokes a succession of surreal scenes (without benefit of any scenery or props) as well as a broad range of characters who speak in many dialects. My favorites include a henpecking wife who, having driven her husband away, yearns for the burden of setting him straight again, but on her own terms (“I must be given a free hand”); a curmudgeon who finds hell boring because it lacks fire, brimstone and devils with pitchforks; and a cautious soul who must summon the courage to excise the worst of his demons, with whom he has grown all too comfortable.

    Lawton's preoccupation with the psychological nature of heaven and hell begs the question of what happens in the afterlife to people who feel perfectly fine about themselves (Osama bin Laden, say, or George W. Bush) but cause real physical damage to others. (In one interlude, a murderer winds up in heaven, much to his victim's consternation.) But this is a minor quibble. Lawton's one-man, one-act play of just 75 minutes constitutes as intelligent and provoking an evening as I’ve spent at the theater in a long time; it’s often devastatingly funny as well. As performed during the week of Gerald Ford’s death, it also provides a cogent explanation as to why Richard Nixon remained in hell even when he reached the White House, and why Ford remained in heaven even when he left it.

    Incidentally, The Great Divorce demonstrates the benefits that accrue when an actor writes his own material— at least, when the actor's interests extend beyond the narrow world of the theater. (For more thoughts on entertainers' infatuation with themselves, see my review of Chicago.) I haven't encountered Lawton before (I missed the Arden Theatre's recent A Prayer For Owen Meany), but I'll watch for his name in the future, and so should you.
Published: Dec 20, 2006