C.S. Lewis' 'The Great Divorce' tantalizes with thoughts of heaven and hell, spiritual insights

Friday, Jan. 30, 2015

SALT LAKE CITY — The Fellowship for Performing Arts will bring the theatrical adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce to Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah Feb. 13-14. 

The Fellowship for the Performing Arts’ mission is to produce theater from a Christian world view that is engaging to a diverse audience, said Max McLean, founder and artistic director, in a press release.  

“This is C.S. Lewis at his imaginative best,” said McLean, the show’s producer. “In The Great Divorce, several of Lewis’ quirky, hopelessly-flawed characters take a bus ride from a suburb of hell to the outskirts of heaven. But the tantalizing question the play asks is: Will these lost souls choose to stay? Or do they actually prefer a life divorced from paradise?”

The Great Divorce is an imaginative work of literature based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which Dante is given a tour by one of his intellectual an inspirational vigilantes, said Dominican Father Peter Hannah, Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center parochial vicar. “C.S. Lewis is inspired by George MacDonald, a Scottish author, poet, fantasy writer and Christian minister, who gives him a tour of the middle realm between earth and heaven,” he said. “As the story progresses, there is a smattering of different scenes where C.S. Lewis, as the narrator, observes people either going to heaven or hell, making key moral decisions that determine their future. The play is filled with rich spiritual insights and profound spiritual lessons.” 

C.S. Lewis was one of the English Christian intellectuals and philosophical writers of the early 20th century, said Luke Stager, Judge Memorial Catholic High School campus minister and freshman theology teacher. “The intellectuals wrote books in response to one another; C.S. Lewis was an atheist, but had an early conversion to Christianity.”

With The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis responded to William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell by writing of their divorce, Stager said. “C.S. Lewis says, ‘If we are to enter heaven, we cannot even retain the most intimate souvenirs of hell; we must leave all our sins behind.’”

As narrator, C.S. Lewis sees ghosts that keep him from going further into heaven; “it might be a grudge, but something keeps him from listening to the spirit,” Stager said. “The thing I love about this work is that he focuses more on the spiritual sins like pride, not the mortal, obvious sins.” 

The JMCHS peer ministry students read The Great Divorce; some really liked it, while others didn’t quite know how they feel about it, Stager said. “You have to be sharp-eyed to catch on to Lewis’ writing style; students, toward the end of the book, are able to apply elements to their lives.” 

The Great Divorce has theological concepts, but “I have [students] read it more for the spiritual development, kind of as a veiled examination of conscience,” Stager said. 

C.S. Lewis was “highly regarded by Catholics and atheists alike,” said John Lane, Saint Joseph Catholic High School ninth- and tenth-grade theology teacher. “In The Great Divorce, one is not condemned to hell or chosen for heaven; one chooses. People ride a bus to the top of the mountain, heaven, where the sun is shining, but it hurts their eyes, the grass feels like glass, but they don’t like it. 

“C.S. Lewis shows that if an individual doesn’t have a formation of goodness, it will hurt him and he won’t be able to accept heaven,” said Lane. “He brings an interesting idea into the afterlife showing it as a choice for humanity; we can choose good or we can choose evil and through these choices we form ourselves to one or the other.” 

 

What: The Great Divorce

When: Friday, Feb. 13 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 14 at 4 p.m.

Where: Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah, 1395 Presidents Circle, Salt Lake City   

For tickets, visit http://greatdivorceonstage.com/salt-lake2 or call 801-581-7100.

Dominican Fr. Peter Hannah will discuss “The Great Divorce” Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center library lounge. RSVP to Fr. Peter at pjohannahop@gmail.com.