E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten
Berkoff Steven Berkoff Plays 1
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ISBN: 978-0-571-31846-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
East; West; Greek; Sink the Belgrano!; Massage Lunch; The Bow of Ulysses; Sturm und Drang
E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-31846-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, East London and first studied acting at the City Literary Institute in Holborn when he was nineteen. Following full-time training at the Webber Douglas School of Drama, he worked extensively in repertory theatre in England and Scotland, doing every job from understudy to stage management. In 1968 he formed his own company, the London Theatre Group. Through mime, ensemble work and voice, the group developed their own innovative theatrical language. Berkoff's encounter with the great mime teacher Jacques Lecoq in Paris was seminal in this. Steven Berkoff's plays include East, West, Sink the Belgrano!, Kvetch, Ritual in Blood, Oedipus, Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion, The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, Decadence, Sit and Shiver, Greek (adapted as an opera by Mark Anthony Turnage), Harry's Christmas, Acapulco, Massage, Sturm und Drang and Brighton Beach Scumbags. He has written an autobiography, Free Association, and many theatre books including I Am Hamlet, Overview and Meditations on Metamorphosis. Among Berkoff's film credits are A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy, The Tourist, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and his own version of The Tell Tale Heart.
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The stage is bare but for five chairs in a line upstage whereby the cast act as chorus for the events that are spoken, mimed and acted. A piano just offstage creates mood, adds tension and introduces themes. A large screen upstage centre has projected on it a series of real East End images, commenting and reminding us of the actual world just outside the stage. The cast enter and sit on five chairs facing front – piano starts up and they sing ‘My Old Man says Follow the Van’ – out of order and in canons and descants. It comes suddenly to a stop, MIKE and LES cross to two oblong spots – image of two prisoners photographed for the criminal hall of fame. They pose three times before speaking. DAD, MUM and SYLV speak as a chorus.
LES: Donate a snout, Mike?
MIKE: OK I’ll bung thee a snout, Les.
MIKE: Mike’s OK. After the Holy Saint … Mike with a hard K. Like a kick … swift … not mad about Les.
LES: It’s soft, it’s gooey … but choose it I did not … in my mother’s hot womb did she curse this name on me … it’s my handle … under the soft – it’s spiky, under the pillow it’s sharp … concealed instrument … offensive weapon lies waiting.
MIKE: Oh, he doth bestride Commercial Road like a Colossus … that’s my manor … where we two first set our minces on each other … and those Irish yobs walk under our huge legs and peep about for dishonourable bother … he’s my mucker, china or mate.
LES: And he mine since those days at least twelve moons ago when sailing out the Black Raven pub in Whitechapel the selfsame street where blessed Jack did rip and tear in cold thick nights so long ago … those muffled screams and slicing flesh no more than sweetest memories of him that went so humble ’bout his nightly graft. Tell how it chanced that we sworn mates were once the deadly poison of each other’s eye.
MIKE: He clocked the bird I happened to be fiancéd to, my darling Sylv (of legendary knockers) and I doth take it double strong that this short git in suede and rubber, pimples sprouting forth like buttercups on sunny days from off his greasy boat: that he should dare to lay upon her svelte and tidy form his horror leering jellies … so I said to him ‘fuck off thou discharge from thy mother’s womb before with honed and sweetened razor I do trouble to remove thy balls from thee.’
LES: Oh! Ho! I gushed. You fancied me around the back with boots and chains and knives, behind the super cinema it was then called afore it came a cut-price supermarket …
MIKE: Which we have well and truly robbed since then.
LES: So round the back we went that night … the fog was falling fast, our coat collars were up … our breath like dragon’s steam did belch forth from our violent mouths … while at the selfsame time we uttered uncouth curses, thick with bloody and unholy violence of what we would most like to carve upon each other’s skulls … the crowd of yobs that formed a ring of yellow faces in the lamplight.
MIKE: Right.
LES: … Hungry for the blood of creatures nobler and more daring than themselves.
MIKE: Right.
LES: With dribble down their loathsome mouths they leered and lusted for our broken bottles and cold steel to start the channels gouging in our white and precious cheeks.
MIKE: I thought now fuck this for a laugh.
LES: That’s right.
MIKE: So what if sly old Sylv had led me on a touch by showing out to all the lads, provoking hard-ons and gang wars between opposing tribes from Hoxton to Tottenham …
LES: From Bethnal Green to Hornsey Town.
MIKE: From Poplar up to Islington. The clash of steel and crunch of boot on testicle has long disturbed the citizens of those battle-scarred manors and blue-bottles with truncheons hard as iron have had their helmets.
LES: And their heads.
MIKE: Sometimes removed by rude and lusty lads complete with knuckle-dusters and iron bars nicked from their dads.
CHORUS (sing): Any old iron, any old iron, any any any old iron …
MIKE: Honest and trusty trade upon the streets. We thought …
LES: But we could hardly turn back now with five and fifty chinas egging us on there, with shouts of ‘come on Les, cut off his cock’, and ‘punch the fucker’s head in.’
CHORUS: Come on Les, cut off his cock and punch the fucker’s head in.
LES: Or destroy him Mike … for fuck’s sake don’t just stand there …
CHORUS: Destroy him Mike … for fuck’s sake don’t just stand there. Nut him in the nose … and part his skull from him the greasy turd.
LES: And yaroo! Yarah!
MIKE: Use your iron … put the boot in with shrieks of ‘bollocks’.
LES: ‘Slerp!’
MIKE: ‘Dog face.’
CHORUS: ‘And fucking hell’ …
MIKE: ‘Smash.’
LES: ‘Hit.’
MIKE: ‘Shithead’ …
SYLV: ‘Anoint the cunt with death.’
MIKE: One cried (with voice so vehement). Oh Sylv, it was thee, yes, thy gentle voice did sway me finally to deal out pain, then in I went like paste. I flashed my raziory which danced about his face like fireflies, reflecting in the cold wet streets the little yellow gas light, till the sheet of red that splat from out his pipes did dull it … just felt that soft thud, thwat, as knife hits flesh … You know the feel? It’s soft and hard at once and gives you collywobbles with thrilldoms of pure joy.
LES: My pure and angel face, my blessed boat did, on that sacred night receive his homage … red did flow – I knew my cheek was gaping open like a flag … but never mind, to stop the Tiber, stop myself from kissing death flush on the lips I held it with my hand, held what I could while trickling through my fingers ran my juices sweet as life.
CHORUS (murmurs): ‘Brave Les’ … ‘hard man’, etc.
LES: And then I simply said ‘you cunt’. Just that. ‘You cunt … I’ll shit down scorpions of pain upon thee … I’ll eat you! Get it!!!’ My iron found his skull where he had just begun to move but left enough for me to bang and crack a dash, enough bone there to bend and shift a bit … split off and splinter bits in brain … his brain … splatter … the lads said.’
DAD: Oink.
SYLV: And assholes.
CHORUS: Fucking hell!
LES: Too far thou’rt gone and really farted death on him …
CHORUS: Oh shit … swerp … ugh … AAAAAARH …
LES: Have it away, before the law doth mark us for accessory.
MIKE: So off they flew … left me for dead and Les near dying too in pools of his own blood he choked … the steel had bit too deep … I felt the silence creeping in … and found myself in an old movie, silent like … and flickering to its end … so what? What’s it all about?
CHORUS: Alfie?
MIKE: Those cunts have left us, shit in pants (their own) while we slosh round in guts … they watched, were nicely freckled by our gore, and thought ‘Let’s scarper now, we had our fun, those cunts are done … let’s piss off ’fore the law should stride with boots hobnailed in woe to grab us in their fat and gnarled claws.’
LES: We picked ourselves and all our bits from off the deck and fell into each other’s arms … with ‘What the fuck’, and flashed a quirky red-soaked grin at our daft caper thinking what a bloody sight … we can’t jump on the 19 bus in our condition looking like what they hang up in Smithfields … Those...
