Paradise Lost (Wilton's Music Hall, 19 June)

Five minutes into this, and I was about ready to give up on it. Manchild walks out; manchild tells a lame joke; manchild does a stupid thing with a rope. Some music plays. Christ almighty: seventy-five minutes of this. But the opening twee hipster bullshit is, fortunately, being staged for our benefit. By the end I was totally sold: on the seriousness with which it took the story of Paradise Lost; on the way that it adapted it to the context of a modern relationship, and modern child-having; and finally on the few moments when it directed our imaginations to contemplate Miltonic battle scenes, somehow through one guy standing in the middle of a stage. The initial awkwardness, the cutesy-poo hipsterdom, was a way of bringing us into the production; of disarming us, and also of seeing god's creation of the world--and a parent's creation of a child--as acts of sweaty, awkward, not-sure-this-will-work improvisation. 

I don't think I've ever thought of Milton's god as hurt before: as awkward in creation as a parent with their children, and as devasted as a spouse at the end of a relationship. So this retelling of that story made me take Milton seriously in a way I never had. Similarly, I don't think I've ever seen the terror of being a parent conveyed so effectively; no kids m'self, and I was terrified of losing them. And I felt that opening--that opening I hated--coming back to me relentlessly: that god-the-father and an actual father both work through awkwardly willing something into being, terrified that whatever they imagine watching them will stop it, or not care, or find it stupid. A relentlessly smart script, with some repeated phrases making comparisons between unlike contexts drawn together in brain-explodey ways. Some of the most effective stage effects I've seen in a while; but that introduction opens them up to us, again, as effects willed into being by someone who isn't sure they're going to work. 

They totally did.