Overview

by Steven Berkoff

For ten years Berkoff has travelled all over the world - from Fiji to Acapulco - acting, directing and writing. This book is his diary of these trips Berkoff is the author of "East", "West", "Sink the Belgrano!", "Decadence" and "I am Hamlet".

212 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1994

About the author

Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director.Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, and Adolf Hitler in epic mini-series War and Remembrance.

His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Massage (1997); Sturm und Drang; and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia (2001). East, Greek and West were punk-inspired works about working class London youth based on Oedipus and Beowulf respectively.

Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "in yer face": "the language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation."

According to Annette Pankratz, in her 2005 Modern Drama review of Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance, by Robert Cross, "Steven Berkoff is one of the major minor contemporary dramatists in Britain and – due to his self-fashioning as a bad boy of British theatre and the ensuing attention of the media – a phenomenon in his own right."

"I'm scared of Steven Berkoff" is a line in the lyrics of "I'm Scared" (1992), by Queen's guitarist Brian May, released on his first solo album Back to the Light (1993). Brian May has declared himself as a great admirer of Berkoff.

The Berkoff Performing Arts Centre was named for him at Alton College, in North East Hampshire on 20 June 2008.

Reviews

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific read, this! It's mainly Berkoff relating the adventures he's had travelling around the world to act in movies of questionable quality, although there are a couple of good long poems thrown in. His writing is well-observed and often very funny - I could especially relate to his annoying experience of having to share a cinema with inconsiderate people, and his description of enjoying a steak dinner made me want to do the same despite being a non meat-eater! His sketches of those he encounters along the way, such as Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken and Mikhail Baryshnikov, are also fascinating.

I bought this for £5 at The Playground Theatre when I went to see Berkoff perform his uncomfortably funny one-man play about Harvey Weinstein. I was impressed that he was selling merchandise at such reasonable prices, and also by the fact that he said he would be in the bar after the show if anyone wanted to speak to him or have anything signed (though I didn't take him up on it).

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very heavy meal, full of exciting (often brief) observances about acting, writing, some politics, theater life, city life, movie life, a steak, normal people in a NYC cafe. Berkoff's ear is fine-tuned, and his language is vibrant, even assaultive at times. Most of the best, funniest writing is devoted to pulverizing American and UK culture. Not the kind that goes to see plays. Yet despite some snobbery in tone, the details are hilarious. It's hard to argue with any of the passionate characterizations. To think most of the essays were written in the 80s, a right-wing decade almost quaint compared to the apocalypse of today, is a shock.