Lou Liberatore (left) is Beelzebub and David Andrew Macdonald is Lucifer, aka Satan, in Tom Dulack’s retelling of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
The Fellowship for Performing Arts concentrates its efforts on drama with a Christian theme. Previously it has presented an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters; Shadowlands, a 1990 drama about Lewis himself and his middle-aged romance with an American Jewish woman; and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (1960), about Sir Thomas More. But its current production of Paradise Lost is a heartening leap forward for the company.
Milton’s 1667 poem is billed as the inspiration for this version by Tom Dulack. When tackling a profound work like Paradise Lost, whose stakes are eternal and outcome well-known, it helps to have an adaptor who can inject a bit of humor into it: Dulack is the author of the lowbrow comedy Breaking Legs (1991). Purists may raise eyebrows at anachronisms—a motor scooter, an orange with a bent metal straw stuck in—but such touches leaven the proceedings without cheapening them.
Robbie Simpson is Adam and Marina Shay is Eve in the play based on Milton’s 17th-century narrative poem. Photographs by Jeremy Daniel.
With impressive red lighting by Phil Monat, Michael Parva’s solid production opens at the lake of fire (Rev. 10:20), where Lucifer and Beelzebub, his second-in-command, have been thrown following their failed rebellion against Heaven. Embodied by Lou Liberatore as a kvetching Brooklynite—“It’s bad here and gettin’ woyse,” he reports at one point—Beelzebub looks pretty shopworn, with a broken angel’s wing, Roman breastplate and soiled running shoes, thanks to Sydney Maresca’s costuming. David Andrew Macdonald’s magisterial Lucifer, dressed in Revolutionary War clothing (as befits a rebel leader), exhorts the fallen troops via microphone: “All is not lost. Our unconquerable will is not lost.” He has heard of a new world the Creator has made, and he aims to spoil it.
But Lucifer is confounded when a blowsy woman with lesions on her shoulders appears. She rides a motor scooter and wears strings of sausages around her waist. She claims to know him, and ultimately reveals herself as Sin. Along with Beelzebub, she is one of Dulack’s comic delights, and Alison Fraser channels the distinctive speech patterns of the late Ruth Gordon as she puts a comic spin on grim lines:
Yes! I’m Sin! Your own little girl and your wife and the mother of our whelp whose name is Death. I’m Sin! Remember? I’m your little girl, conceived and delivered in the moment you decided to challenge the great Tyrant.
Meanwhile, Eve is in Eden, naming the animals and admiring herself in a fountain. Marina Shay gives her a persistent querulousness and a carefree air. She meets Lucifer, and when he introduces himself, she tells him: “Great name. I’ve been placed in charge of names here, and that’s a great name.” But the exchanges between Eve and Lucifer seem slack (and Eve’s instinctive apprehension of things doesn’t jibe with her surprise at learning about Adam—from a bird).
Much of Milton’s vast poem is necessarily left out, such as a passage that foretells the doom of Catholics:
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, toss
And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds: All these, upwhirled aloft,
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off
Into a Limbo large and broad, since called
The Paradise of Fools…
On the other hand, Dulack slips in a modern sensibility, as when Eve mentions, jarringly, “empowerment.” Or when Mel Johnson Jr.’s imposing Gabriel responds to Eve about whether angels make love. He answers with a remarkable comment on sexual fluidity: “We are at all times and in every way both male and female. And when we make love, there are no obstacles of membranes, joints or limbs to place limits on our coming together.”
Macdonald (center) and Liberatore with Alison Fraser (left) as Sin.
Although both the design and the actors are excellent, the familiarity of the story keeps it from being gripping. Eve and Adam find each other, of course. Adam is the least interesting of all the characters in the production, and the debates he has with Eve are inevitably talky (as are those between Lucifer and Gabriel); it helps a lot that Robbie Simpson invests our ancestor with wonder, trustworthiness and nobility. Adam is lonely, but faithful to God’s commands until he eats the forbidden fruit—an act that seems overtly sacrificial, because Eve is marked for exile, and he cannot live without her.
Harry Feiner’s multilevel set and John Narun’s lush projections are enhanced by the music (and sound design) of John Gromada. It’s a truism that villains are always the better parts, but FPA’s enlistment of actors of the caliber of Fraser and Liberatore is a coup. Dulack has done a creditable job of streamlining Milton’s epic, and Parva and his production do well by it.
The FPA production of Paradise Lost runs through March 1 at Theater Row. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, and at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are available by calling (212) 239-6200 or visiting fpatheatre.com.
