Actor, writer and director Steven Berkoff first came to my attention at Corsham Festival when I watched actor Linda Marlowe perform her one-woman show, Berkoff's Women. I have to admit I was blown away by Marlowe's passionate, harrowing, tender performance and Berkoff's extraordinary writing.
He is a contemporary playwright like no other, his language is vital, exuberant, violent and beautiful, words that slash like a knife, or caress, or jolt or mesmerize.
His writing draws on Shakespeare (by way of A Clockwork Orange) but his concerns are those of 20th and 21st century Britain, the working class citizens of London, the Falklands War.
Berkoff has just published a new book, entitled My Life in Food, and it was this slim volume he discussed at the Guildhall at the Bath Festival of Literature on Sunday. Now in his seventies, Berkoff still possesses a powerful physical presence and compelling gift for speech and performance. He discussed the importance of food in literature and in his own life, its connection with character, desire, love and memory and read from My Life in Food, including a piece about chicken soup, after a long preamble when he told the audience about the significance of chicken and chicken soup in the Jewish community, into which he was born.
Bath Festival of Literature 2008
Sat Feb 23 - Sun Mar 2
At the end of the session, questions were invited though I received the impression the audience were all a little timid about this.
Berkoff (who has played some memorable film villains, including a gangster in the Krays and a sadistic Soviet officer in Rambo II) has remarkable presence, suggesting he wouldn't suffer fools gladly. Afterwards he signed books and scribbled his name in the front of my copy of Plays 1 without a word. I didn't quite dare ask him to write my name as well.
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