Joining Charles Dance and Janie Dee in the roles of C.S. Lewis and New York Divorcee Joy Davidman, is John Standing (A Delicate Balance) as Professor Riley.

Also included in the cast are Richard Durden as Major W.H. Lewis; Graham Padden as Reverend "Harry" Harrington; Alan Gregg as Drew Mulligan and Osmund Bullock as Dr. Maurice Oakley; Christian and Jonah Lees as Douglas.

Dee was last seen in the West End in Michael Frayn's Donkeys' Years and with David Soul in Mack and Mabel. Other credits include Peter Hall's production of Pinter's Betrayal and Olivier-winning performances in Carousel and Comic Potential.

Film actor Dance ("Gosford Park," "White Mischief") was last seen on the London stage with Jessica Lange in Robin Phillips' production of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Nicholson's play, which was based on his award-winning television version, premiered at London's Queens Theatre in 1989 starring Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Lapotaire. The stage version won an Evening Standard Best Play Award and a Tony nomination in New York. The 1993 film, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, was nominated for two Oscars and five BAFTA Awards, winning the BAFTA for Best British Film.

Set in 1950s Oxford, the work centers on the donnish C.S. Lewis, whose life alternates between a cold, book-cluttered house and the claret and High Church conversation of Oxford academia. His relationship with New York Jewish Christian convert Davidman is charted. She divorces; they marry; she dies of cancer.

The play not only explores the flowering of later-life love but asks why a loving god should permit suffering.

For more information on Shadowlands, call 0870 950 0925.