Lost Dog 343x343 photo by Zoe Manders 300x300{extravote 5} At the end of Lost Dog's performances of Like Rabbits at The Place in London last October, the audience was treated to a trailer of what seemed an improbable if not impossible next piece: an adaptation of Paradise Lost. Hesitant, awkward, somewhat madcap and mostly hilarious, Ben Duke introduced the outline of the piece, enacting some of the proposed scenes, such as a nervous God chatting up bad boy Lucifer in a pub. And that eccentric 15-minute trailer has evolved into an eccentric 70-minute full length solo, performed at Summerhall every day at 4.40pm.

The Place seeks to challenge preconceptions of what dance is, and that is particularly evident in the choice of works which The Place is presenting at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, and especially true in the case of Paradise Lost. And Lost Dog has long sought to blur the lines between theatre and dance, making Paradise Lost extremely hard to define.

Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me) is about Ben Duke's retelling of Milton's Paradise Lost, through narrative, vignettes, chick peas, fake feathers, movement and dance, but ultimately, Paradise Lost is about Ben Duke himself as performer, starting with the self-consciousness, awkwardness and uncertainty he portrays at the beginning of the show, aiming to read a passage from his book but losing his place, recounting an anecdote which is a not-too-subtle dig at the audience to be supportive of his performance.

Although Paradise Lost is a solo show, Duke more than makes up for this by assuming a myriad of roles including the narrator, God, Lucifer, random angels, various animals, Adam, Eve, the serpent (represented by a sock puppet) and possibly himself.

In Duke's version, Paradise Lost takes place in the present day, with God and Lucifer living together in a modern flat (could God not have afforded a whole house?), the Garden of Eden is a mere park, and Eve is told by the serpent that eating the apple is like listening to Janis Joplin's Summertime - only to acknowledge that Joplin won't exist for a very long time. But we get to listen to the song anyway.

With Duke as God, God becomes an insecure and broody character, dominated by his relationship with Lucifer, who he describes as 'rude, blasphemous and not musical'. Of course the crux of their relationship comes when God reads some criticism of him and decides he needs to have a baby, only for Lucifer to resent the baby, go on a drunken binge and summon other drunk angels to make war on God. But before the war itself takes place - with Duke playing the part of angels on both sides, amid flying chickpeas (in lieu of heavenly boulders), we see Duke playing both sides of an argument between God and a pissed Lucifer. Duke's God is very human and identifiable, if quite the underdog.

Early on in the show, Duke alludes to running out of time, and once God decides to create Man - God mutters that people will be so grateful for God's creation of the world, they'll make dance pieces about it - Duke chooses to comment on Adam's first dances, only performing the highlights of them before getting distracted by his insecurities about being judged by small children in the next room.

Music plays an essential role in Paradise Lost: from Duke abseiling down a rope at the start to Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, Lucifer's fall accompanied by Debussy's Clair de lune and an ironic choice of a Nick Cave song, which takes the audience from Eve's creation to what seems to be an account of Adam and Eve's relationship, from their first meeting in ballet class with Adam wearing a unitard, to kindling their relationship in the canteen and ending up in a claustrophobic home with a small patio.

Throughout Paradise Lost, Duke interrupts the narrative with interjections from what seems to be his (or God's) personal life: being questioned, and insulted, by his child, trying to get his child ready for school, being headbutted in the balls by said child, dealing with the other parents at the school gates, reminiscing about a relationship and what seems to be a very personal tale of childbirth and fearing that the child is stillborn. These stories appear so personal, it is only later we realise that Duke is still in character as God, with Jesus as the child in question.

The movement scenes - from God's earliest attempts at creation, to Duke's final solo dance - are often painfully awkward, disjointed, graceless and twitchy: entirely true to the insecurity and awkwardness of God's character.

Paradise Lost is an extremely eccentric work, and hilarious, and its success is due to Ben Duke being such an engaging performer. You're not going to find another show like this, which is why it's all the more important to see it while you can.


Paradise Lost is at Summerhall every day until 30 August at 2.40pm.Details: festival15.summerhall.co.uk/event/paradise-lost-lies-unopened-beside-me/
Tickets: tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/paradise-lost-lies-unopened-beside-me
Website: www.lostdogdance.co.uk
Running time: 1 hour 10 mins