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The Collected Plays, Volumes 1,2 and 3

The collected volumes include some short but sharp introductions by Berkoff, I have included some quotes in my descriptions of the plays.  For beginners Volume 1 is best, and includes East. Volume 2 has many of his one-man plays. Volume 3 has the historical plays.

Volume 1: East, West, Greek, Sink the Belgrano!, Massage, Lunch, Bow of Ulysses, Sturm und Drang.
Volume 2: Decadence, Kvetch, Acapulco, Harry's Christmas, Brighton Beach Scumbags,
Dahling You Were Marvellous, Dog, Actor
Volume 3: Ritual of Blood, Messiah, Oedipus

The adaptations

Kafka adapted by Berkoff: The Trial, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony.
Aeschylus´ Greek drama Agamemnon and Edgar Allen Poe's horror story The Fall of the House of Usher, both adapted by Berkoff.

Fiction and poetry

Gross Intrusion and other stories 1979

Early stories by Berkoff, with Gross being a good description of some of them as Berkoff looks at aspects of sexuality, but more to shock than to reveal insights.  Berkoff is not really a short story writer, but some are worth reading:
- Say a Prayer for Me is similar to the later Graft stories
- Daddy is an early version of the mother in the cinema scene from East
- The Secret of Capitalism is similar to Kafka´s Imperial Messenger

At times though Berkoff´s writing is over-sentimental
the sea is heavy and the small waves roll over each other like small kittens
and, as in Graft and his non-fiction, his descriptions of women veer into shampoo advert territory
her hair would impersonate a waterfall spilling over a cataract

On From my Point of View Berkoff naively says
I managed to crawl inside a women's mind... I found it was not so different from a man's

This lack of self knowledge is similar to his claim to have perfected a Scots accent in Prisoner of Rio and Shakespeare's Villains, when in fact it sounds like the sort of thing a drunk would do when impersonating Rob Roy.  The paperback version includes the extra stories Hell and Actor.

Requiem for Ground Zero 2002

Berkoff´s well-intentioned but not very good poem about 11 September.  Written shortly after the event, it became a one-man performance at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002.  Well intentioned and genuine, but the poem is not very good.  The imagery is obvious- the planes surf the sky, moments are precious (and two verses later bonds are also precious), overweight ladies waddle and death is grim-faced.  The poem is often very clumsy 'Hey Jules... It's Brian, I'm on a plane...' he said, / 'That's just been hijacked; it doesn't look good,' he adds.  The best verse is the personal one: My irony, we play the death of Christ, / I take a needed break to rest my bones, / I switch the TV on to kill the time / And watch time killed in screams and horrid moans.

Another view by site visitor Linda (thanks Linda) is:

I was extremely moved by Steven Berkoff's poem/performance. Hadn't read it first, so might have had a different impression. But in Edinburgh I wound up sitting right in mid front row & was completely mesmerised. Had been a bit apprehensive, ie couldn't imagine how anyone could do justice to the subject matter & feared it might be full of ego. But in the event found the simplicity of the words, images & delivery - the pictures they painted & normality they evoked - served to accentuate the absolute horror. Felt I hardly breathed for the whole hour & rooted to the seat after - just wanted to sob.

Graft: tales of an actor 1998

A collection of related short stories about Harry (an autobiographical failed Berkoff). From the initial audition to enter actors school to the end of a career each story picks out a part of Harry's existence
there comes a point in men's lives when not to do something means that nothing is worth fighting for anymore

There are some good insights into acting and directing
Most English plays had to have a drinks table as this gave the actors something to do, when writers can't quite find a way of moving their characters

Sometimes Berkoff does come too close to sentimentality.

On specific plays, acting and productions

I am Hamlet 1989

Very detailed notes, almost line by line, of Berkoff´s interpretation of Hamlet.

The pangs of dispriz´d love
with a small pause before love while thinking of Ophelia´s treachery

Get thee to a nunnery
I make to go off again, and again I use this ruse to suggest to the watchers a fragmented mind that pirouettes like a crazy moth around a flame. I come back again, refreshed by a new thought, like a firework you think has spluttered out, only to cackle into life once more
Or if thou wilt needs marry

A Prisoner in Rio 1989

Berkoff´s diary during the writing and filming of the film about the British Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, in Rio de Janeiro.

It gets worse and worse. Some kind of horror creeps over me. I have to escape. Grotesque abuse of performers spending all night doing a scene of walking up and down stairs, or spending hours driving pointlessly around. All this will be cut.

Coriolanus in Deutschland 1992

We repeat the scene where the citizens come on like birds flying in to feed on corn...I enjoy the sweep and flow of the scene and how it visually and textually fits and discharges into the air a real sense of the danger to come

Meditations on Metamorphosis 1995

Highly recommended.

A diary of Berkoff in Japan staging Metamorphosis. Both the autobiographical sequences
when it came near opening night I would sit in the cafe opposite the theatre so that I could enchant myself with my name up in lights
and the insights into the staging
the lodger allows you to tap your unlawful side, the bottled up crazy part of you, the childish, anarchic side... the harlequin aspect of the lodger allows him to react to everything with the brightness of a monkey
are excellent.
The concealed is always more alluring than the revealed

Richard II in New York 1994

This has not yet been published.

An older woman in a red duffel coat sits on a stool at the end of Pete's Diner smoking a perpetual cigarette... it is a perfect simulation of a Hopper painting.  That reminds me of Richard II, which I am here to direct.  We expect the usual flamboyant opening, expect it so much that we protect ourselves against it.  We brace ourselves for the expected... We want to be touched deeply but mustn't strive for the obvious and be an easy lay.

On acting and his life

Three Theatre Manifestos 1978

Published in Gambit magazine in 1978, Berkoff´s theory of theatre. Essential reading!!

Get rid of all the covering and social mannerisms of careerism and all protective attitudes. Be a sacrifice and live dangerously.

America 1988

Poetry and essays. It is no longer available, but most of the essays are included in Overview.  The essays are good though the poetry is generally not particularly good

We'll get you in the end, don't run
There's no escape, no credit cards
Will help you when you drop the bomb
To preserve Disneyland and Dynasty

There are some interesting moments

oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god,
forbid the streets, forbid the streets, forbid
the heat, the heat, the overwhelming heat, the heat.
Devouring me, devouring me, devouring me

  
The illustrations by Graham Dean are good.

The Theatre of Steven Berkoff 1992

Mainly black and white photos of his work as a director/writer as well as actor. It gives a good feeling for the staging of such works as The Trial.  The front cover photo, which I use of the start page of the site, is by Robert Pederson.

Overview 1994

Short autobiographical essays, including some previously included in America. Typically Berkoff is staging a play (so in control) or acting in a film (so under someone else's control). He writes at breakfast when he turns up before anyone else, and keeps himself away from other people. He will train at the gym and go jogging. For lunch he will go to different places, seeking out the obscure. When he sees cameras in a shop he wants to buy them but feels guilty at the expense, eventually does buy one then feels shy at using the hi-tech giant lens toy.

He describes a concert of the ageing singer Johnny Ray
he still had the deaf-aid...he had to adjust it from time to time, when his hand would sneak inside his coat and touch something near his heart whenever he finished a song. I suppose that when he belted he turned it down, unless he was testing his heart was still working

Free Association 1996

Steven Berkoff´s enjoyable and informative autobiography.

He describes his role in War and Remembrance with typical modesty
just a pity one has to wade through so much post-vital Mitchum and the rest of the stuff to get to me

but he also knows when not to take himself too seriously
It's wonderful to hear one's plays performed in another language, particularly French. It makes one sound so intelligent

Shopping in the Santa Monica Mall 2000

Similar to Overview, Berkoff is again in cafes or hotel breakfasts waiting for a performance of a play (Salome) or a film (Flynn).

The writing is good as Berkoff avoids his prose pitfalls of metaphors that are just too forced, and over-sentimental descriptions of women.
their bellies are crawling over their belts like overflowing lava.
my heart seems to sink deeper into its chest the way a frightened puppy will nuzzle into its protector.

And there are sharp observations
on planes particularly , the response, when asked what I do, is always deep respect for the live theatre, usually manifested by an admission of having seen Cats.

and equally sharp condemnations
I sat down again and resolved never to go north of London for the rest of my life.
clubbed to death with the blunt tools of the director's imagination.

Enjoyable but it does cover old territory. He needs to get out more.

Tough Acts 2003

Berkoff writing about people he has worked with, including Kubrick and Polanski, Eddie Murphy and Sylvester Stallone, Joan Collins and Al Pacino.  Recommended.

As it happenend, Sly [Sylvester Stallone] dropped out of the movie [Beverly Hills Cop] and his role as a tough cop was taken over by Eddie Murphy , who turned the film info a raving black comedy, which shows how close any situation can be to humour"

My Life in Food 2007

"Actor, writer and director Steven Berkoff has had an obsession with food commencing with his earliest childhood memories at his mother’s table and developed through his travels around the world as an actor out on tour. Away from the comforts of family and home cooking, food took on the role of companion and lover.

From anonymous fast food counters, East End cafés and New York diners, through falafels in Tel Aviv to sushi in Tokyo and on, Berkoff’s personal collection of anecdotal stories, documented with photographs, reveal the transforming nature of food and its significance emotionally and culturally, in his own inimitable style."
 

Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance 2004

Robert Cross´ critical examination of Berkoff´s work.  A useful and long-needed appraisal of Berkoff.  Recommended.

Bedside Guardian 1991

A compilation of articles from The Guardian.  Berkoff writes a short article No one left to blame from 6 Dec 1990.  Berkoff picks up on a previous article by Howard Brenton.  After referring to him as a distinguished playwright, he then lashes out at him.  Berkoff rejects the people who rely on subsidised theatre, and take no initiatives of their own.  Like a lot of Berkoff vective, the argument is weakened by the vehemence.

You can purchase the books on the shop page.

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