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This is a collection of three history plays, each displaying the sparkling muscularity of language that marks Berkoff out as one of the foremost wordsmiths in the English language. Set in thirteenth-century England, Ritual in Blood looks at the persecution of the Jews. Messiah begins with the image of Christ on the cross and pits His humanity and transcendent goodness against the evil of those who would kill Him. Finally, Berkoff offers a sharp and accessible adaptation of Sophocles's Oedipus tragedy.
What goes through a man's mind when he is playing Hamlet? How does Shakespeare's best-known play actually work, from the inside? Steven Berkoff is an actor, playwright, and director with an extraordinary talent for conveying powerful ideas and emotions. His production of Hamlet, in which he took the title role, began in Edinburgh in 1979, went on to the Round House in London, and toured throughout Europe for the next two years. The company completed its final performance as guests of Jean-Louis Barrault at his Rond Point Theater, where the audience gave the production a tempestuous ovation. During the tour Berkoff kept a journal and recorded the workings of the play from the director/actor's point of view. On the basis of that diary Berkoff has created an intensely personal analysis of the play with a line-by-line examination of the text and the way he approached it in his production. His detailed observations show how his imagination covers a wide range of human experience--from love and death to the nature of marriage and the messianic fervor of Hamlet. I Am Hamlet not only reveals the mind of a fascinating actor and director at work, it is also a singular encounter with a part that "touches the complete alphabet of human experience" and that every actor feels he is born to play.
Hamlet and Ophelia express the infinite variety of their passion in a work which takes the form of an epistolary play in verse. Steven Berkoff's startlingly original drama charts the lovers' story beneath the surface of Shakespeare's play. With a muscularity of language tempered with tenderness, Berkoff's play is shot through with images of courtly love, sexual desire and intimations of future tragedy. The chill of the ending perfectly offsets the preceding violent heat in what is another unique piece of work from the individual talent that is Steven Berkoff. The Secret Love Life of Ophelia was first performed at the King's Head Theatre, London, on 25 June 2001.
'Franz Kafka has found his perfect modern interpreter in Steven Berkoff.' Financial TimesFocusing on rehearsals for the 1992 Mitsubishi Theater, Tokyo, production of his adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, Steven Berkoff muses on the nine previous productions of the play over a twenty-three-year-span, starting with his own performance as Gregor Samsa in 1969 at the Round House, London, and taking in the productions in Los Angeles in 1982 with Brad Davis, 1986 at the Mermaid in London with Tim Roth, 1988 in Paris with Roman Polanski and 1989 in New York with Mikhail Baryshnikov.Meditations on 'Metamorphosis' dissects and illuminates Kafka's story and Berkoff's own stage adaptation, contrasting rehearsal techniques and performance styles between different cultures and sexes. A valuable document for anyone interested in Metamorphosis and all who relish the explosive dynamism of Steven Berkoff's work.
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 present: 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.
A third collection of plays by one of Britain's most popular and widely performed playwrights Up 'n' Under (winner of the Laurence Olivier Comedy of the Year Award 1984): Five unfit lads strive for sporting glory against the local pub-rugby champions, Men Behaving Badly meets The Full Monty. Perfect Pitch: Ron & Yvonne are seasoned caravan holidaymakers. Every weekend they head for the coast to get away from it all. Snug in a prized four-berth, theirs is the perfect pitch, until Grant and Steph set up camp beside them... April in Paris (nominated for Laurence Olivier Comedy of the Year 1994): Al is a builder - well he was until he got laid off. Bet sells trainers. Al spends hours in his shed painting while Beth is addicted to entering competitions in magazines. Neither has any faith in the other. Until one day, Beth win "a romantic break in Paris for two"... "John Godber is one of the unsung heroes of British theatre, reaching the giddy heights of number three in the most-performed playwrights league table, nestled in behind Shakespeare and Ayckbourn" - Guardian
Steven Berkoff is a phenomenon. Among the artists working in the theatre today he is probably the most theatrical - his special combination of speech, movement and spectacle is uniquely powerful. This first collection of his plays includes East, described by Berkoff as 'an outburst or revolt against the sloth of my youth and a desire to turn a welter of undirected passion and frustration into a positive form'. Also included in this collection are the plays West and Sink the Belgrano!