PARADISE LOST. To 14 February.
Northampton
PARADISE LOST
by John Milton adapted by Ben Power
Royal Theatre To 14 February 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 12 Feb 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 01604 624811
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 February
Brave or foolhardy, Paradise is not quite attained.Of all English poems, this must be the last you'd expect to see staged. It's massive (a minority of lines makes it here). Milton's style is syntactically intricate and convoluted a Henry James of the iambic pentameter. Ben Power's script begins by ironing out one of the inversions.
It's very much a play of two halves. The first's set in a dank space, high walls and no colour, where the scarred defeated of the heavenly revolution descend like a boiling pudding, ready to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven. If this is backstage, the demons' first meeting, backed by an awry-angled red-plush curtain, is an impromptu theatre-hiring in pandemonium all-devils' hall. With hand-held mikes, they plan a strategy. Man, God's dearest creation, ends up target for Satanic vengeance.
This is the aggro-act, all violent, negative emotion, with scope for Liam Steel's movement. After the interval comes the longer - agro-act. Adam and Eve are placed in a realistic garden, which looks like a stage-set. Wandering around in realistic bareness, they make a strong case for not going unclothed on stage. It's not a matter of individual appearances, but of attention being dissipated from the small area of the human body which expressively details emotion and mood.
I know, pause for innuendo. But the new humans' fascination with each others' bodies only half succeeds in showing their wonder with each other as new-created consciences. It half looks like they're engaged in a mutual flea-removal exercise.
Perhaps the point's most fully made when Darrell D'Silva's Satan (the cool cigarette-smoking seems contrived) has had them bite the forbidden fruit and sexual urges flood aggressively in to replace tenderness. Christian Bradley and Leah Muller (supercharged even in quiet mode) are good but have more words than actors should be given per idea.
D'Silva incorporates a fine range of tones, never losing the driving fury underneath. And Jonjo O'Neill makes the least verbal, most dramatic, point as the Son, silently troubled, suggesting complexity, rather than single-state exposition, is the root of human experience. - his final Crucifix-pose reminding there's always a cost to evil.
Moloch/Adam: Christian Bradley
Belial/Eve: Leah Muller
Sin/Raphael: Caroline Faber
The Son: Jonjo O'Neill
Beelzebub/Death/Gabriel: Antony Bunsee
Satan: Darrell D'Silva
Voice of God: Tim Piggot-Smith
Director: Rupert Goold
Designer: Ben Stones
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: Gregory Clark
Movement: Liam Steel
Assistant director: Mike Hayhurst
Projection artwork: Lorna Heavey
2004-02-11 18:02:55