Wherever She Is There Is Eden. Lion and Unicorn Theatre.

“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden” is the final line from Mark Twain’s comic short story, Eve’s Diary. Twain’s tale is a spoof recounting of events in the Garden of Eden, written mostly from Eve’s personal perspective. Early on in the story, hatched innocent and unworldly into the Garden, the neophyte Eve soon concludes she is some kind of experiment. As she begins to understand and admire more of the world around her, she notices something she identifies as a man: Adam. Friendship, then courtship ensues. The rest, Fall and all, is history.

Peter Barrett’s entertaining comic single-hander Wherever She Is, There Is Eden, energetically performed by a charismatic Matilda Rowe, is a modern day take on Twain’s story. In this version it is a gauche teen girl named Niamh who bursts forth into a burgeoning sense of awareness. Dressed in pyjamas decorated with bunny rabbits, she emerges from a protective cocoon of discarded clothes and crisp packets into a bedroom filled with children’s books and teddy bears. Niamh is revealed a kind of idiot savant with a knack for naming the animals and plants around her and an urgent desire to eat the forbidden fruit, in this case potatoes. She discovers joy, in the form of wine gums, loneliness, and sadness: “water pouring out of the holes I see through”. She also encounters a soppy but hunky posh boy called Niall whose main interest is in asking what the newfound things surrounding the duo are all for. Cue here a decidedly Gen Z conversation about establishing gender pronouns, “they are superfluous” says Niall. “I am me, from another view I am she”, is her take on the subject.

Here the story diverges from the biblical epic. Rather than a tale about falling into sin, what follows is a gently allegorical celebration of human curiosity and our ability to find beauty and wonder in the world around us. This is an Eden filled with positive possibilities, whether for love, sexual desire, friendship, understanding or simply recognition. Modern empowered Niamh is generating her own sense of identity, entirely on her own terms and with an eye on inclusivity – why are the other animals so prejudiced against the vultures she asks. It is Niamh who eats the forbidden fruit, discovers fire, and launches a kiss at an unexpectedly timid Niall.

Wherever She Is, There Is Eden is an engaging and often moving 60 minutes that makes a decent point about making positive choices in life, unburdened by the labels that others assign us. It is also a wise, unassuming love story.

Writer and Director: Peter Barrett