Paradise Lost by John Milton is an epic theatre biblical piece about the origins of good and evil, heaven and hell, and the original sin. The DAN School production is not Milton’s paradise, but instead is the reimagined world of Paradise Lost by Erin Shields.
The DAN School of Drama and Music Winter Major, Paradise Lost, had its opening night on March 7, with a preview on March 6 at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.
On the surface, Shields’ Paradise Lost is a feminist take on how women have been seen as lesser beings or portrayed as evil throughout history. Underneath it all, the show highlights the impact of the patriarchy on every aspect of the human experience.
In the pre-show statement, Director Evalyn Parry emphasized the show was to be improved.
Despite being a preview, my expectations for the performance were high considering the high budget, time, and effort that was put into the show by students, faculty, and artists. With opening night in 24 hours, there aren’t many edits that can be made to a show that can revolutionize the audience experience completely.
Set designer Meg McLeod, ConEd ’23, and costume designer Brianna Wey, ArtSci ’24, explained the design process of the show in an interview with The Journal. McLeod and Wey described the aesthetic of the show as ’90s punk grunge.
“Everyone on the team is so creative and we’re all collaborating on such a big thing that you can’t help but imagine all of the possibilities.” Wey said in an interview with The Journal.
Despite the show being in a black box theatre, the expansive set made the small space feel sprawling. The bare bones of the wood truces, risers, and eight-foot-tall platforms elevated the simplicity that this could be any paradise at any time. The set was covered in posters depicting rock bands with names referring to the story of Adam and Eve.
The set served grunge, and it was over the top just as you would expect for an epic.
Another over the top design was the costume for God the Father. From the moment God entered the stage, all eyes were on the extravagant white and gold suit. The costume wasn’t ’90s punk grunge, but it was epic and played well into the God-complex that God the Father obviously portrays as creator of the universe.
The characterization and acting from Satan and God the Father was phenomenal. Sophie Buchkowsky, ArtSci ’24, and Jake Henderson, ArtSci ’25, were perfect opposites of each other as Satan and God respectively. Buchkowsky was cynical, unrefined, and unapologetic in expressing true feminine rage.
Henderson was a force to be reckoned with while being the all-powerful and perceived as the all-knowing.
“I’m portraying a known figure, but it’s not a figure from history. It’s not a figure that we have interviews from or anything like that, it’s more like an idea than an actual character,” Henderson said in an interview with The Journal.
“I had to do a lot of research about how I wanted to portray God. Did I want to do Old Testament or New Testament, there’s a lot of options. But at the same I had a lot of free will.”
As a character with very few lines but on stage for most of the show, Henderson’s portrayal of God the Father was heavily symbolic. God doesn’t need to speak for you to know God is always watching.
Much like the surface level and underlying messages of Erin Shields’ work, there was a surface level amount of epic to the production. While God the Father had a grandiose costume, the other costumes felt disconnected and didn’t fit into the grunge aesthetic.
There was an unnecessary number of cheap-looking props used throughout the show that could’ve been avoided, with the show having the same impact. This was particularly evident in the Garden of Eden scenes which took a long time to transition in and out of.
The sound designer, Jonas Jacobson, ArtSci ’25, was on stage for the whole show. Overall, the sound design was okay, but it didn’t give epic. To truly embody epic, live sound requires building onto previously used sounds and hours of practice to keep tempos consistent.
The blocking felt unpolished in many scenes and that level of uncertainty was portrayed in the cast. It felt like the actors were holding back from performing to their full potential. It was confusing to see five fallen angels in the opening scene when the script calls for the seven deadly sins.
The lesbian love story between Satan and Sin was glossed over which was unfortunate given the obvious symbolism of the relationship between religion and queer identity as well as the misogynistic idea a woman can’t be happy without a man.
There’s a lot to love in this production and the message alone is enough of a reason for people to see this unrelenting take on a well-known piece of epic biblical theatre. To put on an epic is no easy challenge yet the DAN School Major created a paradise with endless meaning.
Paradise Lost runs from March 7 to 17 at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. Tickets are available for purchase online.
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