In the Shadow

Comments (0) By Danna Berger Thursday, Feb 8 2007

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Terms of Endearment was the perfect date movie—romance, humor and death—but it doesn't hold a candle to the late-life love shared by American poet Joy Gresham and C.S. Lewis, the celebrated Irish writer and theologian. Fifty-year-old "Jack" was a classics professor at Oxford—in the middle of writing Chronicles of Narnia—when he began an unlikely, scandalous correspondence with this former Jewish Communist divorcee. Their shared love of poetry and lack of hypocrisy blossomed quickly into marriage by 1956 and abruptly ended when she died four years later of cancer. Profound grief led to Lewis' own death in 1963—on the same day President Kennedy died. Their story became the basis of the hit movie Shadowlands in 1993 (starring Debra Winger, our favorite dying wife!). The Contemporary Theater of Dallas, 5601 Sears St., brings this exquisite love story to the stage Friday through March 4. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays (no matinee this Sunday, though). Call 214-828-0094 or visit contemporarytheatreofdallas.com.
Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Feb. 9. Continues through March 4