C.S. Lewis is spreading English cheer in a production from Emery Entertainment at the Westport Playhouse titled Christmas with C.S. Lewis. 

This is Lewis’s third visit to Westport – or rather, our third opportunity to visit him, or again an actor playing him at the Playhouse in an Emery Entertainment production. The first evening was called simply An Evening with C.S. Lewis. Like the Christmas play, it was written by David Payne, who played Lewis in that first production here. Lewis’s second visit was in Payne’s Lewis and Tolkien, in which the other title character is Lewis’s friend, J.R.R. Tolkien.

All three plays now tour the county, as does a play of Payne’s about Winston Churchill. How frequently Payne still performs them I do not know, but so great is the demand for them that Payne has brought in others to perform the plays, including the actor we have seen here, Gregory Williams Welsch. Welsch has had an extensive career as an actor, in New York, where he trained, on and off Broadway, and in theatres around the country. But that career began here in St. Louis, his home town, in St. Louis University High School, under that school’s much admired teacher of theatre. Welsch appeared as Tolkien opposite Payne’s Lewis at the Westport in Lewis and Tolkien. 

Christmas with C.S. Lewis takes place in Lewis’s study in his home in Oxford in 1962, the year before his passing. Playwright Payne explains that Lewis is hosting a group of American historians – that’s us in the audience – who are visiting England at Christmastime. “They have an interest in English history, so they’ve decided to spend Christmas in Oxford to experience a typical English Christmas. Because Lewis was a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature, they’ve asked whether he could do a small talk on Christmas past,  Christmas present and also what Christmas means to him.” When his phone rings a couple of times, he quickly deals with some business and then explains that he has a group of Americans visiting him and he must get back to them. He shows his guests a mince pie and says that having it at Christmas is a tradition that stretches back to medieval times. He talks about the evolution of gift-giving, sending cards, and family gatherings. And he reveals that for many years he had no interest in the meaning of Christmas from a religious point of view.

That changed when he got to know a fellow Oxford professor of English literature, J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a very sincere Christian while at the same time being a very intelligent man. Their friendship led to Lewis’s accepting the reality of Jesus’s life, the truth of his teaching, and converting to Christianity and joining the Church of England. 

Given the importance and popular success of his writings on Christianity, I was a little surprised that more was not made of his faith and of his reasons for it, especially given the opening provided by the Christmas setting. 

I was also surprised that little is made of the literature that he spent his life studying and explaining. He does talk about writing the Narnia Chronicles, sharing them with Tolkien as he was writing them, as Tolkien shared The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Lewis. 

But much of the evenings covers the same biographical events as he recounts in An Evening with C.S. Lewis. In the second act he tells of befriending an American poet at a meeting and beginning a steady correspondence with her. When her marriage ends in divorce she moves to London and the friendship grows. She has trouble renewing her visa, and Lewis suggests they marry, which will solve the visa problem. It also develops into a true love match. But after a few years she develops cancer, and her death is a devastating loss for Lewis. It does strengthen his faith, rather than destroying it. 

Welsch tells it all in a very pleasant, warm-hearted manner, with occasional, well-delivered moments of humor. This is, according to all reports, a fair and accurate portrait of Lewis.

The staging places a comfortable chair beside a fireplace with a wood fire warming the room, surrounded by shelves filled with books and, to one side, a window through which we can view snow falling gently and steadily throughout our visit with Lewis. And a pleasant and enlightening visit it is.

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by John David Scarcliff 
Gregory Williams Welsch as C.S. Lewis