A Titmuss-t See?

I'm quite a fan of modern adaptations of old classics. There's much to say about tried-and-tested methods that captivate readers and audiences for centuries, but it's also nice to smell the sweet breeze of change and newness that invigorates the sameness of the old. This is why I always like to see a modern re-branding of Milton's works, and my goodness are there some! A handful include: the stage adaptation of Paradise Lost by Ben Power, two upcoming film versions of Milton's major epic (one of them possibly appearing in 3D), and Mark Morris' dance production of L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

However, trading on popular phrases derived from Milton, entirely out of context, such as "Paradise Lost" (who would be so uncouth as to coin Milton's "all hell broke loose" in a blog title, for example?) is rife, especially in film and theatre. A couple of my favourites are Taylor Hackford's 1997 The Devil's Advocate and John Stockwell's 2006 Paradise Lost. The former casts Al Pacino as the devil, aptly (or not-so-aptly) named John Milton, who hides behind the guise of a major US law firm director. The latter follows a group of American students whose trip to Brazil (Paradise) becomes soured after the group are drugged and subjected to the terrifying world of live back-street organ harvesting (Lost).

And now on to Abi Titmuss. My ears rightfully pricked up when I read the words "Paradise Lost" and "theatre" in the same sentence, but it only got better when I saw Abi Titmuss, locking lips with another lady in order to promote her new play. Rather than in any way relating to the poet's seventeenth-century epic, Paradise Lost follows six interconnected characters, wrapped up in secrets kept from each other, who spend an evening poring over a ouija board. Abi Titmuss plays a lesbian embarking on an adulterous relationship with a married woman, whose husband also happens to be present at this occult get-together. It's a far cry from the first chapters of Genesis depicted in Milton's Paradise Lost, but this new play opens up a wholly different aspect to the idea of adaptation, modernisation and change: does the modern audience remember Milton when they hear "Paradise Lost" - his words?

(I was quite distraught (perhaps too strong a word) to discover that I'd missed the boat on this one - Paradise Lost ran at the Leicester Square Theatre Basement from the 19th to the 23rd October.)

The Fall of Man at the Brewery Theatre, Bristol

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to see a performance of Red Shift’s The Fall of Man at the Brewery Theatre, Bristol. Being able to think through the theatrical potential of Milton’s texts without having to rely on reviews and playscripts was a long-awaited blessing. Here was a well-recommended production from a praised theatre company, adapting Paradise Lost for a twenty-first century urban audience, unashamedly low-key and non-spectacular, entirely engaging with both the seventeenth-century text and modern relationships.

The play follows Peter - a middle-aged, middle-classed married white male, who begins an affair with his young, poor, Slovenian nanny, Veronica. At first connected through their love of art and dissatisfaction with their respective societies, soon the pair are talking less about art and more about oral sex and making excuses to “Mrs”. Inevitably, the middle-classed white male will not leave his wife for the Slovenian nanny, and the Slovenian nanny becomes bitter that her dream of having a rich husband and a swimming pool are shattered. Quickly escalating from stolen nights of forbidden sex to a bitter argument over class, money and sexual fidelity, the audience witnesses the emotional power of the modern break up, interlaced with the words of Milton’s Adam, Eve and Satan.

PL is used throughout in asides – not entirely embedded in the twenty-first century script, but always used to focus the audience’s mind, and set the tone of each scene. Although never justified by the characters, Veronica seamlessly takes on Eve’s words, as Peter speaks Adam’s, the Narrator’s, and Satan’s words. As in PL, the play opens with Peter already falling and, speaking lines originally spoken by Satan about his fallen state, Peter’s fall from grace necessarily parallels falling in love with Veronica. The temptation to infidelity it always symbolised in eating and tasting the forbidden fruit – which becomes an anachronistic use of the modern phrase referencing sexually circumspect acts. However, giving Peter lines from both Adam and the Son means that not only does temptation become the forbidden fruit, but Veronica herself as the object of the fall. Peter looks on at the peaceful garden and is jealous (as Satan does in book IV), but also looks on the fruit, and wants it. It is at this point that Peter and Veronica begin their affair.

Veronica, however, only speaking lines originally for Eve does not have as much chance to look or survey her circumstances as Peter does. As she recounts how she first met Peter (speaking IV.449-492) Veronica’s love seems simple and unabashed; she sees Peter as her “other half” (IV.488), and as the only one she loves. However, it is hard not to also sense Veronica’s own narcissism as she speaks the lines, a narcissism that becomes wildly apparent in the last argument between Peter and Veronica at the play’s finale. She, as a young nanny in a foreign city, is evidently not the innocent or ignorant first woman. In bed with a married man, Milton’s lines sound filled with hope on her lips, and yet the audience are made well aware in the modern lines throughout the play that Peter and Veronica are not completing one another emotionally, physically or spiritually – there is always “Mrs”. Furthermore, true to Milton’s text, it is the woman who falls first. Except, in falling for the fruit, Veronica is not gaining knowledge, but giving Peter oral sex – and it is Peter who speaks the narrator’s lines. The fruit here is not Veronica, but Peter’s penis, and it difficult not to smile when hearing the lines “Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:/ […] Greedily she engorged without restraint” (IX.781-791). Arguably, then, Veronica is the agent of the fall – both her pleasing looks tempting Peter to be unfaithful, and it is the sexual acts she performs with Peter that make up the fall.

From the above, it could be argued that the play is sexist against Veronica – making her the sole blame for Peter’s downfall. The play may be using Milton’s text in this way, allowing Milton’s words to present the masculine outlook on the affair. However, this is balanced in the modern script. Veronica very much leads the modern dialogue, especially at the end of the play. It is Veronica who ends the affair, realising that Peter will never leave his wife for her, and that any dreams she had of marrying him and having a happy life are shattered. Inevitably, she blames her own financial and emotional destruction on him. Through the use of PL, the audience hears Peter’s argument, focussing on the woman as object of temptation, but through Veronica’s lines, the audience hears that Peter is just as responsible as Veronica. Looking at Milton’s text, the fall affects both Adam and Eve, Adam as head and leader of the woman also bearing the brunt of disobedience. In this modern adaptation, using the text as a one-sided argument presents how modern (and fallen) relationships do not necessarily end with unity through sin, but that unless responsibility comes from both parties, there will always be separation.

Paradise Regained, performance and the beeb

Well hello once again, dear blog! Unfortunately, I have avoided posting here for far, far too long. Perhaps I am blog-shy, who knew? Whatever, I’ve decided to break the web silence in media res of the longest piece of research I am yet to embark upon, which is, of course, based on the work of John Milton.

A subject that has for a long while tickled my fancy is now becoming quite a substantial itch – is Milton a dramatist? Did he truly want the unstaged closet drama, Samson, to stay in the closet forever, or is it about time Samson came out? Luckily there have been some wonderfully convincing arguments (including fully staged productions) of Samson to show it’s performable qualities.

I’m currently concerned with the performable nature of the brief epic to which Samson is appended. As a blind poet, dictating in the epic form, Milton is never so close to the classics as when creating his epics. That said, such creation comes from a dictating poet, and both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are born through a kind of oral performance.

Of course, I was incredibly excited to see BBC Radio 7 were putting on a nine-part radio play of the brief epic; I almost fell off my seat when it was introduced as “drama from John Milton”! For here we have an epic demonstrating its utterly performable oral form, whilst Milton’s lyrical styling shines both as wonderfully dramatic and tantalisingly enthralling to a twenty-first century audience.

And I’m waiting for the reprimand to come for being too irreverent, BUT – although the vocal performances for the beeb radio play were excellent, the whole production still created what I felt was a somewhat rigid and lofty grandeur. True, it fits with Milton’s canonical status; and there’s nothing quite like grandeur when listening to a conversation in heaven. However, does the same apply for lines spoken by a man wandering in a wilderness landscape, sleeping under trees and stars, on a spiritual journey of discovery? Yes, I know that Jesus is God – and Milton certainly doesn’t downplay that fact. But there is something fundamentally human about Milton’s Jesus, a human element that jars with lofty vocal presentations of the character.

Milton’s Jesus is never more human than when he admits his need and desire to learn. In fact, if we read the entirety of PR as a demonstration of teaching and learning, then the smiling Father allows Satan to tempt Jesus in order “to exercise [Jesus] in the wilderness” (I.156). Indeed, the Father has great trust in his Son’s abilities: “His weakness shall o’ercome Satanic strength/And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh” (I.161-2). However, the first time the reader encounters the Son, he is trusting the Spirit that has led him into the world, but is still scratching his head as to exactly what he will do:

O what a multitude of thoughts at once

Awakened in me swarm, while I consider

What from within I feel myself, and hear

What from without comes often to my ears,

Ill sorting with my present state compared. (I.196-200)

The Son that the Father has so much trust in appears, not as a grand victor prepared for his battle against sin and the devil, not as a ready conqueror, but as a simple, trusting man, ready for the divine to lead and instruct him in the work that he is destined to do. It is this more down-to-earth depiction of the Son that lofty vocal performances do not present.

Martyr...

Martyr, my Martyr left his heart
in my hand all dripping
and cold, my pound
of flesh, to have and to hold.

Blessed are you all meek and lame;
yours the final curtain, yours
the fame. I won't give you
the Earth, it's your inheritance
dear; you'll get up and walk
when I sweep you off your feet.

When the dead are raised all
your dreams will be
fulfilled. But now only
from your love springs tears. Sanctified,
this font crosses
your furrowed brow.

Blessed be each push and shove, each
pull and tear, each circular thought, each
gyre and step slouching slowly
slowly on.

Vivid pump in hand, we cannot
reverse. It's rigid this altar
of love, it's wrong
this sacrifice.

So I'll eat it up and, in jest, take
my bloody hand, and we'll
pray to change and
put to death our hate.

Equality in Eden?

It seems that the majority of what I've been reading over the last couple of weeks has centred around perfect copulation. No self-help guide or women's lifestyle magazine in sight, the first man and woman's marital relations has been constantly at the forefront of my reading, and presently at the forefront of my mind.

Having been educated sans males for a decade, a certain feminist attitude has become engraved in a part of my thought, despite my attempts to put them off and retreat back to my pinny and baking ingredients. The feminist twinge comes out when I read such lines as PL IV.297-9:

For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace,
He for God only, she for God in him:

Looking back to an older copy of PL, my first impression, jotted in the margin, questions why only woman would need a mediator, whereas it would seem that Adam, the man, has direct access to God, his head. I don't dismiss that a call to grace and a certain 'softness' are appealing and positive attributes for any woman, and are honourable qualities. However, argues that corner of my brain, surely a woman can call on the 'one mediator between God and men' (1 Tim 2.5)?

Of course, I'm becoming up in arms without considering the natural or beautiful nature of the prelapsarian couple's relationship. It is essentially one of halves and completion - Adam's first call to Eve, after all, beckons her -

Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half (IV.487-8)

Equally, Eve is unreluctant to enter the nuptual bower with her new husband:

though divinely brought,
Yet innocence and virgin modesty,
Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won (VIII.500-3)

To this latter passage, Helen Gardner comments that 'Love between man and woman is thus an image of the love between God and his creatures, freely given and accepted as a gift' (A Reading of Paradise Lost. Oxford, 1965. 84). Just as God is separate and uniquely different to man (and by this I include woman too, of course) so is man separate and different to woman. And, before I entrap myself in an argument that infers the vast superiority of man to woman, just as God chose to become man in Christ, and be in relationship with man (human), so man can enjoy relationship with woman, his 'other'.

It seems I've attempted a brief explanation of sexual politics, whereas what I really wanted to do was share another beautiful piece of criticism on sexuality in Eden. Again, Gardner writes:

Milton will have nothing to do with the horrible patristic conception of the virtuousness of cold copulation. Other feelings than shame make the heart beat faster and bring the blood to the cheeks. (85)

Sexuality for the first married couple was not a chore, and was of more worth than just a means to 'bear/Multitudes' (IV.473-4), but a heart-palpitating union, and a physical symbol of the differing but complimentary natures of the genders.

Wait - that was something I said!

I'm sure for many people, having their name dropped in journals or magazines because of articles they've written is a regular, and therefore pretty normal, occurrence. This is not so for me. The most I've ever had printed was a couple of poems: one in a 6th form 'magazine', and one in a University creative writing journal. Apparently, however, a review I wrote for Electric Stitch last December has found its way into the CCANW Spring/Summer programme brochure. Now, I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to rummage about their brain and come up with the words "A veritable 'you had to be there' event", but I did, and there it is. Printed for all to see. Well, anyone who's vaguely interested in this woody, arty hideaway in Devon.

And I have to say, I will stick by my paltry addition to the brochure - Joy Collective is an absolutely brilliant night, both for those interested in contemporary or performance art and bassy music with an electronic vibe. There is a brilliant feeling that every sense has been catered for, right down to the hairs on the back of your neck prickling at Mila Oshin's sensual vocals, and the inclusion of a poignant brass melody in 'lullaby'. If I was certain I'd be around in Devon in September, I would most certainly attend again, and can only highly recommend everyone else does the same.

A Short Missive on Paradise

I feel that, as I've taken Milton as inspiration (that is quite a buzz word for me at the moment) for this blog's name, I may as well begin with something a bit Miltonic. I've kept a, now slightly messy, notebook for the last few years - a place to out pour ideas, plans, random drawings and other miscellaneous gibberish. Reading around an essay on Milton (of course) I found the following quote, and naturally had to copy it into the 'Secret Book of Mysteries':

A naked man and woman arise in the morning, intermix the duties of the day with flirtacious venery, then consummate thier love at night with a real capture, a real yielding, and go to sleep. This is paradise.

(Kerrigan, W. and Braden G. ‘Milton’s Coy Eve: Paradise Lost and Renaissance Love Poetry’. ELH. Vol. 53. No. 1 (Spring, 1986). John Hopkins University Press. 42.)

I can't help but find something delicious about the organic nature (excuse the tautology) of this description of paradise. It is not paradisal for its beautiful scenery, its pleasing weather or its natural abundance, but for a sheer shamelessness in the first man and the first woman's nakedness; an utter peace in their joint work that, instead of causing annoyance at each other's continual presence, distracts from their daily growing desire for each other. I can't help finding a certain beauty in the innocence of Miltonic prelapsarian sexual activity. See IV. 739-747:

Handed they went; and eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side to side were laid, nor turned I ween
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity and place and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.

For the postlapsarian reader, as with Milton's postlapsarian Adam and Eve, the purity of this original sexuality is tainted by lustful, rather than pure desires: even Paul's instruction against celibacy for all in 1 Corinthians 7 needfully warns against "fornication" (7.2), and encourages sexual activity between married partners to avoid Satan's temptation (7.5). In paradise, however, desires are not stifled or preached against, but rather freely encouraged for their perfection.

Perhaps I am wrapped up in ideas of innocence and beauty, and haven't taken into account arguments against what could be described as limited views of sexuality presented in Paradise Lost, as well as in the Bible. I am not going to argue about Christian, or 17th Century ideas of sex and sexuality (at least not here). However, I will say that, without disputing what should or should not be counted "pure" regarding sexuality, a paradise of perfect relationship with a spouse, and of work which only excites passion and love (with guaranteed consummation) sounds pretty thrilling to me.