We are in a black hole, a dimension away from a dying earth, and God (Lidia Bäck) is angry. Humanity has turned their planet into a post-apocalyptic sea of fire, and they can’t even ask for help!
With dazzling white football shorts and swinging iron-grey dreads, our creator is reminiscent of the Zeus of romantic painting dressed up as a dancehall artist, flanked by the voice of reason in the form of an identically controlled Charles Darwin (Martin Bahne). The latter’s protests, however, cannot induce our attention-hungry creator to keep his earlier promise of “free will”: soon he flings back to our tarnished plane of existence to offer us one last chance for salvation, in exchange for a little love and worship.
Impressive design
Thus we are introduced to the complete ensemble, which, in addition to Bäck as a God figure with alter egos, consists of Bahne (in a double role) as one of humanity’s representatives Adam, and Iida Kuningas as Eve.
The latter, in particular, impresses with an expressive and delicate physical comedy that can even feel wasted on the sometimes cliché-like character. Adam and Eva are two rather stereotypical representatives of the anxiously narcissistic “young” middle class in 2017. Nothing wrong with that: their neuroses provide an extremely fruitful basis for recognition comedy.
The recognition and reference comedy is the play’s real strength, noticeably funnier and sharper than you are used to seeing on Finnish theatre stages. The slacker intellectual mix of high and low and the nihilistic undertone make me think of American animated adult series like Justin Roiland and Dan Harmond’s Rick and Morty.
The references also hit closer home: the scenes when a familiar Scandinavian writer visits Adam to guide him in his masculinity crisis are among the play’s absolute funniest. Ironically, the play’s great strength is also almost like its weakness: sometimes it feels as if the story is so captivated by its own general knowledge and intelligence that it loses its thread, and the viewer wonders what the message is really meant to be.
The lack of a clearly chiseled and well-thought-out moral in the resolution is still far from enough to sabotage the Paradise Doctrine: this is startlingly good theatre! The set design and costumes are aesthetically pleasing if clinical, and Theo af Enehielm’s sound design is carefully and accurately selected, although the volume at times reaches a level that sensitive listeners may perceive as stressful.