The Fall of Man

Since the early 1980s, Red Shift has gained a reputation for innovative theatre and this latest piece comes as no exception. Initially, the premise seems straightforward — Peter (Graeme Rose), a middle-class, married professional becomes entangled in an affair with Veronica (Stephanie Day), the Slovenian nanny who cares for his children — but the moment Rose lapses into a monologue lifted from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, this domestic drama assumes a whole new tone. What begins in sin inevitably descends into misery and the way in which declarations of love slide so rapidly into conflict is made all the more compelling by solid performances from both actors.

Rose is particularly impressive, spitting out Milton’s lines with suitably apocalyptic gravity one minute, before snapping back to smarmy, desperate love rat the next. Jonathan Holloway’s script demands a considerable degree of physicality throughout and, naked for much of the play, Rose and Day are unfalteringly bold in simulating sex and violence.

Performed in the round against an intimate set comprising just a single bed, this is never gratuitous, simply visceral. Yet the magnitude of the central dilemma doesn’t quite match that of original sin or the emergence of the antichrist. It’s lipstick on collars, not fire and brimstone, and when the script snaps back into modernity, a doomed romance between two fairly unappealing characters seems trivial in contrast.

Nevertheless, Milton’s excerpts are woven into the action with thought and precision, creating some potent allusions to uncontrollable lust, post-coital shame and the self-destruction that takes place when one person becomes another’s god.