Ian Hardy, Caleb Cabiness, and Shad Cooper Photo by Up North Creative Photo

Ron Reed, founder and former long-time artistic director of Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, BC, wrote a play that is largely about this friendship, though skewed to a focus on its title character, Tolkien. The play premiered in Vancouver in 2018, and was picked up by Open Window Theatre where a production was planned for 2020. COVID kiboshed that plan, but at last they have been able to bring Tolkien to its stage, for what is the play's first U.S. production.

Similar to Open Window, Pacific Theatre was conceived as a company devoted to works that profess a redemptive quality. It is, then, not surprising that Reed's play focuses on the spiritual leanings of the two great authors and the role those leanings had in their friendship as well as in their writings. Much of the play consists of conversations, often veering into arguments, about the weight their religious views have or ought to have on their written work. Their conversations sometimes include colleagues in an informal literary club called "the Inklings" that met weekly to share excerpts from works in progress, and chat about the larger context of their work: personal, social, political and religious.

Tolkien was born in 1892. He was only three when his father died and his mother Mable, though raised as a Baptist, found solace in the Roman Catholic Church and converted to that faith in 1900. Tolkien was just twelve when Mabel died in 1904. She left her two sons in guardianship of a trusted Catholic priest, with instructions to raise the boys to be good Catholics.

Lewis was born in 1898 in Ulster and baptized into the Church of Ireland. Like Tolkien, his mother died when he was still a boy, only eight years old. Lewis was sent to boarding school in England and, except for brief periods back home, lived most of the remainder of his life in England. In his adolescence he became disillusioned with religion and became what some would describe as a rabid atheist.

It is in the mid-1920s, both having served in World War I, that the two meet at Oxford. Tolkien occupies a prestigious chair teaching philology, an apt outlet for his love of the origins and structures of language. He is exasperated by his students' lack of intellectual curiosity, but takes comfort in the presence of some of his colleagues, among them his friend Hugo Dyson, and an instructor named C.S. Lewis. During the play, Tolkien's wife Edith several times refers to Lewis as her husband's "best," and on occasion "his only" friend. In spite of his admiration for his friend and the pleasure he takes in his company, Tolkien is appalled by his outspoken atheism. Along with fellow writer Hugo Dyson, Tolkien argues for Christian faith, which Lewis deflects. And yet, Lewis admits to a yearning for something beyond disbelief that would provide uplift and bring joy into his life–a joy he currently derives from study of the ancient Norse mythologies.

Tolkien is elated when (not a spoiler to anyone familiar with "The Chronicles off Narnia") Lewis seizes Christianity as the source of the joy he seeks. However, Tolkien holds to a Catholic understanding of Christianity, while Lewis embraces a universal Christianity (he has described it as "merely Christian"), unbeholden to denomination, and so their arguments continue, albeit on a different plane.

Not all of their conflicts are about religion. Tolkien becomes possessive of his friend's attention to a new writer Lewis invited into the Inklings, Charles Williams, so much as to deride it as "a schoolgirl crush." When Tolkien invites writer Roy Campbell into their fold, Lewis is the affronted party, accusing Tolkien of being taken in by Campbell's hollow boasts of heroism. Tolkien in turn berates Lewis for the latter's new-found celebrity as a reader of Christian messages on the BBC (meant to boost public morale) when WWII breaks out.

Tolkien is a wordy play, as the two literary giants exchange perspectives on Christianity and writing, some of it barbed with criticism, and much of it erudite. Beneath the labyrinth of their rhetoric, the play's depiction of the emergence, blossoming and dissipating of an intense friendship between two men is the aspect that I found moving and that gives the play it's driving force.

Director Joe Hendren's staging balances the play's weighty conversations with frequent movement to keep it from becoming mired in discourse. The set design (by Robin McIntyre) spreads out across the stage to give us the feel of a corner of Oxford, with one section of the stage set up as Tolkien's living room, another as his office, still another Lewis's quarters, a pub at which Tolkien, Lewis, and various other members of their crown convene, as well as a tree-lined knoll through which Tolkien and Lewis take strolls while gathering inspiration. Alex Clark's lighting and projection designs go far toward altering the tone of these various locations, and Marybeth Schmid's costume's effectively convey the starchy, tweedy feel of Oxford in the mid twentieth century. Jeremy Stanbary and Joe Hendren's sound design further enhances the production.

Shad Cooper is excellent as J.R.R. Tolkien, absorbed in the creation of a fantastic universe, Middle Earth, while maintaining a staunch view of Catholic conventions and beliefs. Cooper depicts Tolkien as part wide-eyed child explorer, part curmudgeon fixated on unchanging law. He is wonderfully matched by Caleb Cabiness as C.S. Lewis. Cabiness has a keen fix on Lewis's atheistic convictions early on while also conveying his quest for meaning beyond material existence, so that his eventual conversion to Christianity feels wholly credible. He also shows us Lewis's easy way with a wide swarth of society, as opposed to Tolkien's thorniness.

Shana Eisenberg creates the image of a strong partner as Tolkien's wife Edith, though Reed's script limits the character's purpose in the play almost solely to encouraging her husband to apologize to Lewis after yet another of their spats. While their marriage appears comfortable, the playwright gives us little with which to see a hint to understand what more may have brought them together.

Keith Prusak gives a winning performance as Hugo Dyson, a contrast to Tolkien and Lewis as a man of letters who takes his contributions to the field with a much lighter hand. Corey DiNardo ably channels the intensity of Charles Williams, whose writings express a less disciplined Christianity, causing a deep divide between Tolkien and Lewis. Ian Hardy creates a likeable persona as Warnie Lewis, though the role is limited to that of a cynic who has a clever rejoinder for every event as he slides into alcoholism. Rob Ward is effective as the blowhard, though good natured, Roy Campbell.

While Tolkien is a somewhat dry play, chock full of ideas but with little in the way of surprise or climactic developments in its narrative or characters, it does offer a moving portrait of a platonic friendship between two men who regard one another with love at a time when such feelings went unstated. Even when they were most at odds, the depth of their feeling of each other is palpable.

For audience members who wrestle with issues akin to those that wracked the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and for those interested in the genesis of their great works, the play is bound to be eagerly embraced. Moreover, Tolkien has been mounted by Open Window Theatre with great care and artistry.

Tolkien runs through March 30, 2025, at Open Window Theatre, 5300 S Robert Trail, Inver Grove Heights MN. For tickets and information , please call 612-615-1515 or visit openwindowtheatre.org.

Playwright: Ron Reed; Director: Joe Hendren; Set Design: Robin McIntyre; Costume Design: Marybeth Schmid; Lighting and Projections Design: Alex Clark; Sound Design: Jeremy Stanbary and Joe Hendren; Props Design: Nate Farley; Stage Manager: Patrick Campbell; Producer: Jeremy Stanbary.

Cast: Caleb Cabiness (C.S. Lewis), Shad Cooper (J.R.R. Tolkien), Corey DiNardo (Charles Williams), Shana Eisenberg (Edith Tolkien), Ian Hardy (Warnie Lewis), Keith Prusak (Hugo Dyson), Rob Ward (Roy Campbell).