REVIEW: Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me) by Lost Dog

To kill time while the Lost Dog company team sorted out an issue with their computer, the theatre's chief executive Deryck Newland stood up to deliver an improvised speech about the piece and its inception.

Mr Newland told us that the one-man show, delivered ably by Olivier Award nominee Sharif Afifi, was performed for 20 years by co-director Ben Duke, and has only just come into its current iteration.

He also said that for each small, independent production like this one the playhouse puts on, it has to put on a crowdpleaser just to balance the books.

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Looking around at the half-filled room, this made sense.

The play is centred around God (Afifi), who morphs at times into an angry parent rushing his kids into the car for the school run before dancing the earth into existence or battling Lucifer.

At one point boulders (chickpeas) start raining from the heavens, at another water streams down on the lone actor as he ruminates in a distinctly human manner.

The title excuses the play from having too much to do with Milton's poem, but it does become a little difficult at times to understand exactly what's going on.

What does shine through is Afifi's ability – he captured the audience's attention from start to finish with just a chair, a book and a cardboard box as props.

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There are some good moments, one of which was Lucifer's fall from heaven (incidentally, God and Lucifer had been recast as a bickering couple, with God eventually giving birth to the angel's child).

There were some moments though that felt a bit flat, particularly the humorous bits.

 It might just have been me, but all in all, I left the theatre feeling a little underwhelmed, and slightly perplexed as to exactly what I had just seen.