Milton's Paradise Lost: Book II
Hill Street Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: Guthrie Productions

Stuart Simpson

David Guthrie Burns is performing both Book One and Book Two of Milton's Paradise Lost at this year's fringe festival. Running to over two thousand lines (or over two and a half hours) of dense and demanding dramatic monologue, this is no mean feat for anyone to attempt, including the audience.

Burns performed Book One at last year's festival; the performance of Book Two is new to the fringe this year.

During the performance Burns shows that he is still getting to grips with the new material of Book Two. There is the odd pause for thought and an occasional awkward word or phrase. While excusable, this can create the impression that the show is a poetry reading rather than a dramatic performance; that we are listening to Burns recite rather than watching him act.

It is of course true that Burns is reciting a poem, but Milton's Paradise Lost is a dramatic poem, as Burns himself is keen to emphasise. It is a shame that the performance does not always achieve the dramatic effect for which Burns is aiming. However, when it does, as in the passage describing Satan's confrontation with the guardian of the gates of Hell, Burns does allow 'Milton's song to soar'.

It is when Burns has complete command of the material that you understand the reason Paradise Lost should be performed. At the risk of sounding trite, Paradise Lost is an intelligent, beautiful and profound poem. It is a poem in which every word counts. But because of this it is all too easy to forget that Paradise Lost is a story, it has a beginning a middle and an end, it has characters and there is drama.

An audience watching a performance of a work with such rich language and such depth of meaning will come away with a mere sense of the scope of Milton's ambition. However, there is a trade-off. Reading the poem in your own time, with the freedom to consider each passage and each line, the pace and drama of the work can be lost.

It is also true that, as far as is reasonable in a poem running to well over ten thousand lines, there is a need to see the text as a whole, rather than as a collection of great passages and memorable lines. Burns' performance reminds us that a story is being told, and shows us the characters who act out the drama.

The line describing the opening of the gates of Hell is memorable in its self. But it is far more powerful and moving when it is still clear to the mind how Satan came to be standing at these gates, where he is going, and for what dark purpose.

At the fringe this year I also saw a performance of the Gospel of Matthew (not the King James version). Paradise Lost may be one of the greatest poems ever written, but comparing the two I am of the view that Burns shows that Paradise Lost also has a claim to the title of 'The Greatest Story Ever Told'.

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