I’ve always had a soft spot for Satan.

Apparently, Erin Shields does, too. University of Toronto alum and prominent playwright, Shields’ latest endeavor earned her a spot on the 2018 Governor General award shortlist for drama. This play – coming in at five acts – is much easier to digest than the source material it draws from. John Milton’s epic of the same name is nothing if not an enriching read, however, and this reformatting and re-imagining of it, so to speak, is just as fulfilling. Written with the intention of bringing Milton’s narrative to a modern-day audience, Satan’s direct connection to said audience as she addresses them throughout the show speaks to some of Christianity’s biggest worries: that Satan will be listened to, and sympathized with.

After reading Paradise Lost, it is almost impossible not to. The character of Satan, re-imagined here as a female angel (if they can even have genders, as Shields herself remarks upon in her note on future castings), challenges classical depictions of women. Shields herself also adds that “it’s so much fun to be bad!” and I am ready and willing to agree.

Though Satan takes centre stage, the most intriguing characters were, to, perhaps, no one’s surprise, the angels themselves. The energy and personality they exude is unprecedented. Disregard any previous holier-than-thou positions you might have seen such familiar faces as Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel in before; Shields’ angels are a little more down to earth, often quite literally.

As someone with a penchant for poetry, I was particularly intrigued by the language with which Shields’ wrote Adam and Eve’s dialogue. Punctuation-free, simple, and without the use of the “I” pronoun, the first humans are characterized as simple, innocent, and, ultimately, free. The poetic language read beautifully, and drew me in to the way in which Shields’ wants her viewers – and readers – to differentiate the essential humanness of early humanity.

No spoilers here, unless you’ve somehow missed out on this cultural zeitgeist: when Eve bites into the apple with Satan’s encouragement, her language changes. She is revealed to herself; she begins to recognize her existence as an individual. She becomes “I,” not “she”, and punctuation and capitalization return. This shift would probably be wondrous to revel in on a stage (though I am wont to say I haven’t had the pleasure) but in prose: astounding. The shift not in tone but in the very structure of the writing before me was striking after becoming familiar with Eve’s former way of speaking in the acts prior.

Shields’ introduction to the text is aptly titled “Repopulating the Canon” – an idea that links not only to the more physical effect of re-imaginings of gender and positions in power, but to the ideologies behind classical Christianity itself. Shields repopulates the canon with, most importantly, herself: a Canadian playwright writing feminist under- and overtones into, perhaps, the most notorious villain narrative in human history.  If you missed the 2018 Stratford show of Paradise Lost, stay eager and ready for any and all announcements of future performances. Like Satan herself, this play is not to be underestimated.