Ben Power’s version of Paradise Lost was one of the shows that helped make the (now stellar) name of Rupert Goold during his time as artistic director of Northampton’s Royal & Derngate Theatres. In view of the hatchet job that had already been done on Milton, I asked why a few more dozen lines couldn’t have been cut when the two-hour piece Power was asked to write clocked in at three, and not without longueurs.

Well, such a cut was achieved – and achieved most successfully – in last week’s student production of the play at Keble College’s O’Reilly Theatre. Running a shade over 90 minutes, without interval, it proved compelling, emotionally draining drama in which exceptional acting talent was displayed.

The Rev Rowland Hill, in an oft-misattributed quotation, wondered why the devil should have all the best tunes. Paradise Lost is certainly the poem in which he has all (or at any rate most) of the best lines. For this production, director Chelsea Walker found in Joe Eyre an actor of remarkable talent to utter them.

For ‘utter’ read howl or snarl them in fury at God over his expulsion from Heaven, or silkily, suggestively, seductively spout them into the ear of Eve (Izzy Drury) in his – yes, devilish – plan for revenge.

In Goold’s version I found Satan “more stand-up comic than Prince of Darkness”. There was nothing in this line from Eyre who offered at all times a terrifying – and utterly riveting – performance.

His work appeared to inspire others in the cast, including Sam Bright, Emily Precious and Sophie Ducker as Satan’s vile lieutenants, Beelzebub, Moloch and Belial.

In the Garden of Eden we found Eve and Adam (James Corrigan) blissfully happy in their prelapsarian world, their joy reflected in the beauty of the lines they spoke, and spoke very well.

Milton was, of course, inspired by his subject matter to hit the heights in his great poem. One suspects that something of the sort was felt, too, by the young actors involved in this production.

This certainly seemed true of Roland Singer-Kingsmith who, in his role as The Son, gave a powerful delivery of the famous opening of the poem and supplied an affecting conclusion to the drama in the depiction – see photograph – of the Crucifixion