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Steven Berkoff: One Act Plays
Steven Berkoff has been variously described as controversial, thrilling, electric and dynamic. A Renaissance man of the theatre, he is known equally for his writing, directing and acting.
Collecting together nineteen one-act plays, this volume presents never-before-published material. Abusive, shocking and endlessly surprising, these sharply written pieces showcase Berkoff's trademark controversy, black humour and dramatic dialectics.
Themes that haunt much of his work are his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street-patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. The selection of plays allows the performer and reader to experience Berkoff's fluid anarchic poetry at its most profane within the complete and pithy structure of the one-act play.
Established plays such as The Biblical Tales (which enjoyed success in their 2010 run at the New End Theatre, Hampstead) stand alongside previously unpublished material, giving the range of Berkoff's work full expression, from his established thematic concerns to his new and unseen work.
Perfect for student and amateur performances, this volume contains a full introduction by Geoffrey Colman, Head of Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Collecting together nineteen one-act plays, this volume presents never-before-published material. Abusive, shocking and endlessly surprising, these sharply written pieces showcase Berkoff's trademark controversy, black humour and dramatic dialectics.
Themes that haunt much of his work are his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street-patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. The selection of plays allows the performer and reader to experience Berkoff's fluid anarchic poetry at its most profane within the complete and pithy structure of the one-act play.
Established plays such as The Biblical Tales (which enjoyed success in their 2010 run at the New End Theatre, Hampstead) stand alongside previously unpublished material, giving the range of Berkoff's work full expression, from his established thematic concerns to his new and unseen work.
Perfect for student and amateur performances, this volume contains a full introduction by Geoffrey Colman, Head of Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
Steven Berkoff
69 books12 followersSteven 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 7, 2020
Lunch is a fucking masterpiece
May 16, 2016
"....Your words, like greyhounds waiting in the slips,
But then! But then …
Othello slowly stirs within your guts,
Iago wakes from out his hate-filled dreams,
39
And then Prince Hamlet casts his piercing stare,
O'er Elsinore's foul unwholesome air,
Macbeth is in your voice and hand and brain,
You feel a murderer striding through your veins,
Or else you're Romeo, sweet and light and pure,
With lust that flows through you like molten ore,
Now Oberon will soar through moonlit skies,
Casting his spell o'er Titania's sleeping eyes,
And Cyrano de Bergerac will fight
A hundred foul assassins in one night,
And yes, poor Oedipus tears out his eyes,
While sad Jocasta hangs herself and dies.
Mercutio, Coriolanus and King Lear,
In you they are reborn, in you they reappear.
You are no longer there, you are the medium
That brings to life these ghosts, you are the meat,
The flesh and blood upon which they must feast,
Or like a God who breathes into dead clay,
Your soul, so they may live another day!"
But then! But then …
Othello slowly stirs within your guts,
Iago wakes from out his hate-filled dreams,
39
And then Prince Hamlet casts his piercing stare,
O'er Elsinore's foul unwholesome air,
Macbeth is in your voice and hand and brain,
You feel a murderer striding through your veins,
Or else you're Romeo, sweet and light and pure,
With lust that flows through you like molten ore,
Now Oberon will soar through moonlit skies,
Casting his spell o'er Titania's sleeping eyes,
And Cyrano de Bergerac will fight
A hundred foul assassins in one night,
And yes, poor Oedipus tears out his eyes,
While sad Jocasta hangs herself and dies.
Mercutio, Coriolanus and King Lear,
In you they are reborn, in you they reappear.
You are no longer there, you are the medium
That brings to life these ghosts, you are the meat,
The flesh and blood upon which they must feast,
Or like a God who breathes into dead clay,
Your soul, so they may live another day!"
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews