I recently saw a student production of Don Juan in Soho, a re-telling and updating of Moliere's tale of debauchery punished, written by Patrick Marber (of Closer fame). It was actually quite a decent stab at the thing, except for its slightly misguided accents for everyone zeal and the usual student production of problem of having a notorious libertine (the self-styled "Kofi Annan of copulation") played by a fresh-faced eighteen year old who looked like he'd never had a late night or skipped one of his five-a-day in his entire life. The chap, whoever he was, did, however, carry the role, drawling and sneering and sleazily charming his way through the play, supported by his grumbling reluctant minion, Stan. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm of the cast, some intriguing speeches and some witty exchanges couldn't make up for fundamental problems in the adaptation itself, and I found myself wondering if Don Juan really has anything to say to a modern audience.

The parallels between Moliere's Don Juan and Marber's are fairly self-evident: Moliere's is set in a fantasy-Sicily, Marber's in a fantasy-Soho. Both plays present less of a coherent narrative than a succession of loosely connected scenes which further illuminate the character of Don Juan. In each case, he has recently married and abandoned a virtuous woman called Elvira, and is pursued by her family seeking retribution. He is accompanied by a servant who is interestingly complicit in and condemnatory of his life and behaviour. The major incidents remain in place but have been updated by Marber in an attempt to generate equal shock value in a more permissive time: for example the scene in which Moliere's Don Juan simultaneously proposes to two peasant girls is replaced by a scene in which Don Juan woos one woman while receiving a blowjob from another (and it's utterly hilarious, by the way). Marber's Don Juan also undergoes a fake redemption as both response and challenge to what he perceives as the hypocrisy of his time, attempts to make a beggar blaspheme in exchange for money (in Marber's case, the beggar is Muslim - oooh, edgy, man, edgy!) and pays up in the face of the beggar's integrity and invites a statue to dinner which comes to life in response and threatens him with impending comeuppance for his sins. Both Don Juans suffer a rather brutal death, Moliere's, of course, is sucked screaming into hell, and Marber's is murdered by Elvira's kin.

Although ostensibly in the comic tradition, Moliere's Don Juan is genuinely chilling. It presents itself as a relatively simple tale in which the authority of God is challenged by a sinner, he is offered multiple opportunities to repent and change his ways, chooses not to, and is accordingly punished. However, it is problematised by the relationship of Don Juan to the other characters in the play (his servant, Sganarelle, purports to despise him but nevertheless does not leave his side) and the audience, who cannot fail to admire him: we are all equally his conquests. This is replicated to some extent in Marber's version but what is lost is context.

Whether you view it as a positive or negative element of Our Times Today, sleeping around is no longer shocking, and yet this is the primary characteristic of Marber's Don Juan: "the man's a slag. He'd do with anything - a hole in the ozone layer." Moliere's, by contrast, although he is also "always marrying" is introduced initially as something far more iniquitous than a mere manwhore: "he's the biggest bastard ever born ... [] ... a dog, a devil, a Turk, an atheist" [emphasis mine]. Moliere's Don Juan is a libertine in the truest sense of the word: his carnal sins are inextricably connected to his spiritual ones, and to some extent little more than a manifestation of them. He repeatedly offends God and, through his indiscriminate promiscuous behaviour, offends the whole social order; I believe his sleeping around is, in itself, less provocative than the fact he uses it as the ultimate leveller, equating both the elite and the base: "He's always marrying: mothers, daughters, town girls, country girls, cold ones, hot ones, they're all the same to him." His behaviour, combined with his atheism, constitutes a determined assault on what was perceived to be the natural order of things, and a whole way of life and thought. Moliere's Don Juan is an iconoclast, Marber's is just a slut. Stan says that "he has declared jihad on the human spirit" but this is meaningless. How does the nebulous values associated with the human spirit compare to the authority of God? In the modern world - a world devoid of spiritual absolutes - Don Juan has nothing to rebel against; he cannot exist.

In both cases, Don Juan brings his ultimate fate upon himself, courting it with a self-destructiveness that implies a profound despair with life and his own nature, but what chills us in Molieres play is the underlying arbitrariness of it. He goes too far and goes to hell; he transgresses against something that permits of no mechanism of questioning or appeal. Marbers Don Juan, by contrast, is murdered by the family of Elvira in revenge for his treatment of her. They say they will allow him to live if he apologises for how you live. For who you are, Don Juan, claiming to feel no guilt or regret, refuses and so they kill him. However, since it is strikes me as perfectly reasonable (insofar as it is ever reasonable to murder someone) that these people who have been personally hurt and offended by his actions might want hurt and offend him back, it lacks of the potency of the Moliere ending. Essentially, Molieres play says it is not okay to be who you are if that offends God and Marbers says its perfectly okay to be who you are, just try not to piss off people with knives.

Molieres Don Juan makes us question the surrounding framework of the society Don Juan and the audience inhabit. Significantly, Don Juan's justifications for his actions and the reasons his gives for his challenges against God, are presented as rational, not the raving one would expect of a madman: "I believe that 2 + 2 are 4." Don Juan's disbelief in God is juxtaposed against his refusal to believe in senna pods or syrup-of-figs, subtly drawing a connection between these false remedies to spiritual and physical ills. Furthermore, this scene occurs when they are both wearing disguises, Don Juan as a hunter (how apt) and Sganarelle as a doctor (how unapt!) - as a fake Doctor, Sganarelle has been doing his best to prescribe remedies for the villagers, even though he has little hope of success in the matter. Given that a mischievous line has already been drawn to connect God with senna pods, it is a natural mental step to draw a similar connection between priest and a doctor: thus, in his borrowed garb, Sganarelle serves as an illustration of the nature of disguise and deception. Just as his clothes do not make him an adequate physician, who is to say that a priest is a fitting conduit for the word of God. This foreshadows the attack on the hypocrisy of the virtuous that is to come later in the play.

The point of the discussion that takes place in this scene is not so much that Don Juan's arguments for disbelief are particularly profound, but that nobody (in this case Sganarelle) can come up with anything more convincing to counter them. "So who did make everything?" whinges Sganarelle, childishly. Furthermore, Sganarelle's attempt is persuade Don Juan of the existence of God ends up only emphasising the validity of Don Juan's point. Sganarelle condemns Don Juan's arithmetic as "pure superstition" because he will only rely on the evidence of his senses but, of course, the audience cannot help but notice that God is no more tangible a concept than 2 + 2.

Marber's Don Juan also believes in free will: "I choose this life and I own it." But its completely hollow because, in a secular society, free will is the default state. Its the equivalent of believing in your right to eat an entire cake from Marks and Spensers. Basically, you can if you want to, nobodys stopping you, and if you feel a bit sick after, you brought it on yourself. Its the most ordinary kind of libertinism in the world and although Marbers Don Juan has charm, the poor man is pointless. This is further emphasised in Marbers take on Molieres attack on hypocrisy. The original is scathing and, given the time when the play was written and performed, has a lot of political clout: "Other human failings can be criticised, they're fair game for everyone. But humbug stands alone, it silences its critics, it has immunity." The man has a good point to make and, ultimately, despite his intentions to become a hypocrite, when it comes right down to it, he remains true to himself to the very end. He cannot repent, for he feels no repentance, and hell claims him for it. Thus we are brought crashing up against the moral absolutes once more. Surely Don Juan's terrible, fatal integrity (noticeably the only virtue he respects in others, for example he pays the beggar who won't blaspheme regardless) is worth something? The answer, of course, is no but it's hard to not admire him, and lament the fate it is hard to convince oneself he deserved.

Marber's Don Juan, by contrast, launches an attack on ... well ... it's hard to know what really. A bit against hypocrisy, because, lets face it, that remains popular throughout the ages but presented in such a way as to completely rob it of its force: "the paedophile priest, the robbing bankers, the peace-preaching ruler waging war." Gosh, I'm so glad we have Marber and his Don Juan to take a stand against paedophiles, corrupt investment bankers and dictators. There's far too much support for them in the modern world. And there's a bit of a riff on celebrity culture: "There's no privacy. No decorum. They pimp their kids for the cameras, fashion themselves as holes for the press to fuck and then moan and gnash when they get fucked over." And, of course, the traditional whinge against People On the Internet TM: "Some hairy bastard scratched a donkey on the wall of his cave, he saw, he drew it. A million years later: 'Hello, welcome to my blog. Today I bought a plum.' You cunt." Seriously, I dont know what to make of this, it's pathetic. For one of the greatest rebels who ever lived to be reduced to criticising bloggers! Whatever next? A scathing indictment of furries and Tories? It was about this point that Marber's Don Juan - already on the slide - became about as edgy as a spork.

I choose to see this as an essential problem with the nature of the character of Don Juan in a modern and secular world, rather than the alternative (Marber lost the plot). Although to be honest I think perhaps the whole concept of Don Juan in Soho was doomed from the outset for any fans of Newman and Baddiel's Jarvis of Soho.