When asked who is the greatest poet in the English language, most people will say “Shakespeare.” When asked who is the second greatest poet they might say “Keats.” But would anyone say “Milton?” These days it’s hard to find a college graduate who has read Animal Farm from cover to cover, much less Paradise Lost, written by a man who was once thought to be a greater poet than Shax himself.
But it was not always thus. John Dryden, himself a onetime contender for the title of greatest poet in the English language, friend and younger colleague to Milton, supposedly said after reading Paradise Lost, “This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.” Though Milton was an old republican revolutionary and Dryden a loyal monarchist, Dryden liked Milton’s epic so much he adapted it for the stage by rewriting it in rhymed couplets and setting it to music.
Paul Van Dyck has done Dryden one better by keeping Milton’s sublime poetry unrhymed and using all the modern theatrical arts to make Paradise Lost come to life at the FRIGID Festival. I can say without qualification that this is the best theater – the most relevant to our time, the most uplifting, the most artistic, simultaneously the most esoteric and exoteric, visually, aurally, and intellectually stimulating – that I have seen in a long time. And running under an hour, it makes getting some high culture as enjoyable as possible for those of us inflicted with ADD by the modern age.
Obviously Mr. Van Dyck isn’t reciting the whole poem from beginning to end. Milton’s epic is extremely compressed, though that shouldn’t be a problem for most viewers who probably only read selections (if they read it at all) in college. The war in heaven is gone and much of Satan’s discourse on his own fallen state – “Me miserable! … Which way I fly is Hell; my self am Hell” – is cut. Satan’s distress over seeing Adam and Eve in bliss for the first time is recorded only in his brief but apt ejaculation: “Oh Hell!”
Amazingly, however, almost all the cuts work, and little is left out that should have been left in. The most important and relevant lines of the poem for a contemporary audience concern the bond of trust between Adam and Eve, which she breaks by listening to the Satan’s “glozing lies” and eating from the Tree of Knowledge. I might have wished Mr. Van Dyck had kept her Satanic conclusion, that eating the fruit might “render me more equal [to Adam], and perhaps, / A thing not undesirable, sometime / Superior; for inferior who is free?” This is the logic underlying all contemporary right-wing political discourse: to be free one must be superior to others. But Mr. Van Dyck kept my favorite lines, spoken by Adam as an interior monologue when he sees his holy wife, foully strumpeted: “Oh fairest of creation, last and best / Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled / Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, / Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! / How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, / Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote.” It is impossible for me to hear these lines and not think of all the beautiful, intelligent women (and men) who use their God given intellect to ruin the lives of their fellow citizens in the name of those Satanic euphemisms “free markets” and “right to work.”
The sound and visual design are very nearly perfect. Mr. Van Dyck cleverly and deftly uses The Rolling Stones as a soundtrack and commentary on the action, from “Gimme Shelter,” to “Monkey Man,” and – of course – “Sympathy for the Devil.” Adam and Eve are puppets, literalizing a latent metaphor in the poem, and Sin and Death, Satan’s daughter and son, are CGI animations projected onto two sheets that also serve as Mr. Van Dyck’s wings when he assumes the role of Michael at the end of the play. If the soul of poetry is compression, the team who designed and deployed this interpretation of Paradise Lost have come close to making a perfect theatrical poem out of Milton’s great epic.
The FRIGID Festival isn’t going to last long, so if you’re a fan of Paradise Lost and want to see this play, you have to see it this week!
Paradise Lost by John Milton, Adapted by Paul Van Dyck
Dates & Times:
Monday February 28th @ 10:30 PM
Friday March 4th @ 10:30 PM
Sunday March 6th @ 7:00 PM
Tickets:
General Admission: $15
Online: www.FRIGIDnewyork.info
Phone: 212-868-4444
Venue:
UNDER St Marks,
94 St Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A
culturalcapitol.com 
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June 9, 2011 at 6:50 pm
thetigersofwrath
When asked the third, they might say “Cultural Capitol” – a marvellous review.
I was taken by the relevance of Milton to contemporary political discourse and I am pleased you made that link.
One of my favourite political anecdotes refers to the great British left-wing firebrand Michael Foot – a highly respected figure on all sides until his death last year – and it was a friend of his who recounted the story of how one day they both went to watch a football (soccer) match, the second passion in the life of Michael – his other being literature.
“We turned up at the away end,” the friend wrote. “Michael was asked if he had an offensive weapon on him, at which point he produced a battered copy of Milton’s Selected Works out of his coat pocket and gave the steward a lecture about how the poetry of Milton had been one of the most important weapons in English history.
“We got in.”
Foot was also once asked by a student of politics, which, out of a selection on a university list of politics books, he should read.
“That depends if you want to know about politics or rather, understand its heart,” he replied. “If it is the latter then don’t read any of that nonsense, read Milton.”