By Esther Hoffman, junior

Most people imagine hell as a hot, dark pit of fire and brimstone, haunted by the screams of tormented souls and cackles of delighted demons.

C.S. Lewis imagined hell as a cold, wet, sprawling town, ever in gray twilight, where the souls of the damned don’t know they’re damned. They live as shadows of their lives on earth, yet still have one chance to be redeemed.

This one chance at salvation is the theme of Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” which was adapted into a play and performed by the Friends University acting troupe Acts of Faith Feb. 25-28 in the Cornerstone Studio Theatre in Riney Fine Arts Center.

“The damned have vacations—excursions, you understand,” said freshman Jordan Friesen’s character, George MacDonald, in a nearly flawless Scottish accent.

“The Great Divorce” tells of one such excursion, a bus ride from the gray town of hell to the bright meadow of heaven. Visitors from hell can choose to either stay in heaven or go back to hell on the bus.

Lewis, played by freshman Andrew Denton, is the main character and narrator.

Lewis and his fellow bus travelers step out into heaven, where pre-dawn sunlight hurts their eyes and the grass is so solid that they—mere ghosts in comparison to heaven’s solid reality—struggle to pick things up or even to walk.

“It’s darned uncomfortable,” said one bitter ghost.

Throughout the rest of the play, Denton’s Lewis—almost a captive audience member himself—eavesdrops on conversations between the redeemed “bright spirits” and the ghosts as the ghosts make their final decisions to either stay in heaven or to go back to the miserable hell-town.

In each of these encounters, the ghosts are fixated on specific details of their lives on earth. They cling to their own ideas about appearances, anger control, lust and self-pity. Some ghosts fixate on art, philosophy and love, which then become perverted.

Many of them choose to hold on to their fixations and go back to hell, rather than let go and focus solely on God.

This hour-and-a-half play had two acts, with only 11 cast members playing 41 characters. The stage, unfortunately, was almost as small as the cast list. It did provide a more involved perspective but also left little room for advanced props.

One scene in particular could have used some visual aid. As Lewis watched a ghost try to pick up a fallen apple, an angel within a waterfall told him to stop. The only real visual aid here was a series of doorframes serving as tree trunks. There was no waterfall to be seen—only imagined—as Lewis looked on, seemingly entranced by thin air.

Director Kurt Priebe said that the prop scarcity was intentional. He wanted the audience to imagine what was going on, with little more than Lewis’ narration to help.

Priebe also likes the smaller stage for the intimacy the audience has with the characters.

“You’re invited to take part in the lives of the characters,” Preibe said. “If you can see their faces and see their anguish and share in their pain and they’re four feet away, I think it really adds to that.”

Perhaps the 82-seat theater has too much intimacy though. My seat, at the end of the front row, placed me mere inches from the actors as they walked on and off stage. I have short legs but still felt the need to tuck them in every time someone walked past.

Yet I had no trouble hearing what characters said. In a script-heavy play, this is a good thing, especially when the majority of the cast performed with accents.

I agree wholeheartedly that the emotions carried through well in this performance. I was impressed that the majority of the cast members—either freshmen or first-time performers—were able to pull it off so well.

It’s also impressive because this was the first undergrad performance of this play.

The last three performances were sold out, and I wish more people could have come to see it.