Another stellar performance from Steven Berkoff saw the audience delighted not only with his own take on Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ but also a rendition of his verse play ‘Dog’.
Beginning on a stark set with a single spotlight, Berkoff appears to the audience in a mourning suit, as pale as death. His intense physicality allowed him to make the most of the bare stage yet still conveying intricate detail of each movement; the simple movement of opening the door was so realistic the audience could almost see the door itself. Unusually for an adaptation of the morbid ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, Berkoff played on a comedy element, again portrayed through his physicality of running down a long spiral staircase. Whether intentional or simply playing off the audiences’ reaction, this twist made the piece infinitely more memorable and showed Berkoff for the show man he is.
‘Dog’ seems to cause some controversy; at an earlier performance audience members left the theatre, appalled by the intense racism and foul language. However it is those points that make the play so compelling; the audience laughs then realises what they are laughing at. People come away in debate, thinking about what they’ve just seen. Berkoff is grotesque, disgusting and somewhat threatening, his constant straining to hold back his invisible dog keeping an air of fear in the theatre. At his description of what he does to the dog, some audiences’ members tried to hide but found themselves unable to look away, spellbound by Berkoffs truly captivating performance.
The fact audience members left raises the question as to whether Berkoffs plays go too far; but the sheer number who stayed and applauded so profusely begs to differ.
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