Narnia comes to life on stage
C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” will be on stage at The Mill Theatre next month. The Riccarton Players will perform a stage adaptation of the first of the series of books about the land of Narnia. The theatre group believes this is the first staging of any of the Narnia books, as there are no performing rights available nor any scripts. Trudi Urlwin, who did the adaptation, also directs. She had some problems initially locating the agents of the estate of Lewis who hold the copyright. After several unproductive replies from a number of publishing companies who had at some time held the printing rights, she was ready to
give up and began co-writ-ing an alternative play for the December time slot. “A Fairy Tale” was very near completion when word came from the agents, granting special permission to perform her script. C. S. Lewis was a contemporary and friend of J. R. R. Tolkein, and wrote the .seven books that make up the Narnia chronicles from 1950 to 1953. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was the first book to be written and Lewis got the idea for it in 1939. The story line goes like this: Four children arrive to stay in the country with the Professor. Lucy discovers that she can get into a magic land, Narnia, by climbing through the wardrobe in the spare room. The
other children eventually follow and become involved in the good/evil struggle taking place there. The true ruler of Narnia is Aslan, a great lion, but Jadis, the White Witch, has Narnia under a winter spell. All the main characters from the book are in the play. The Professor is played by Martin Phelan, the four children by Anthony Hallum (Edmund), Jane Dunbar (Lucy), Stephanie Creed (Susan) and Paul Kearns (Peter). Tumnus the Faun is played by Dyane Gibson, Jadis by Ursula Cheer and Aslan by Marcel Vanderweerden. Chris O’Reilly slinks about as Maugrim, the evil and hapless wolf servant to Jadis. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” opens on December 7 for two weeks.
Narnia comes to life on stage
Press, 23 November 1983, Page 19
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