The villain of the piece

Stage director, writer, photographer, poet and actor Steven Berkoff has never been one to limit his options, or shirk the kind of challenges that most thespians simply wouldn’t contemplate. A hugely-respected veteran of the stage who has also found time to make film appearances in A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy, Rambo, Absolute Beginners, Beverly Hills Cop, Another 9 1/2 Weeks and The Krays, Berkoff has increasingly concentrated his energies on theatre of late.

I caught up with him as his new one-man show, Shakespeare’s Villains, prepares to hit Dublin, already carrying with it a tidal wave of critical acclaim after its London opening.

CF: You’ve done a few one-man shows now. What is it that appeals to you about the format?

SB: Well, it’s an interesting way of creating a drama with a single person where, in a way, your other actor is the audience. It’s like a confessional and because of that it might have a higher-octane power than where you’re doing it via another few actors on stage. I have worked with other actors, but I found it was awkward ‘cause you have to block them and you have to feed them and you have to deal with them...

CF: And you have to breathe the same air as them?

SB: Yes, that too. It used to be fun sometimes, but as soon as I started working alone I knew it was for me. It felt like being a soloist or a concert pianist – they always work alone, and it’s a greater challenge.

CF: The total control must be attractive, as well...

SB: It is. It means you can understand the audience better, it distils what you know. Also, it empowers you and it opens up the possibility of experimentation. You can do that with another actor, but not to anything like the same extent.

CF: Is it a bigger risk, though, working without a safety net?

SB: Yes it is in a way, because once you’re up there you can’t rely on somebody else to help you out, and if you feel it’s not going well at the beginning you think to yourself ‘oh my God, I’ve got another hour-and-a-half to go.’ It’s interesting, you have to become more of a creative interpreter of your own material.

CF: For Shakespeare’s Villains, what kind of criteria did you employ for selection?

SB: I was looking for characters that were archetypes, that were familiar to the audience. They had to embody certain attitudes, and each one had to have different characteristics. So I chose Iago for jealousy, Richard III for his deformities, Macbeth for ambition, Shylock for revenge - each one represents something difficult.

CF: Key fundamental negative impulses common to everyone?

SB: Yes, I think people can identify with those characters but I also chose them because they’re characters who are familiar to the audience, in that they’ve heard of them and have possibly even seen them performed by other actors.

CF: There are a lot of very complex Shakespearean characters, ambiguous and double-ended: for instance, Hamlet is one of your villains in this show...

SB: I favoured characters that I had played before. I haven’t played that many, but I have played Hamlet, I’ve played Macbeth, I’ve played Coriolanus. But I had limited experience of some of the others.

CF: Were there characters you’d worked on who ended up not making the cut?

SB: Oh yes, sometimes. I’d originally intended to just play Shakespeare and filter the characters through him, in fact. Playing Shakespeare has always been an ambition of mine. In theatre an actor is rated to a certain extent according to his interpretation of Shakespeare and his staying power with Shakespeare. Shakespeare was always the greatest testing ground for any actor.

CF: Do you think he’s the yardstick that he used to be?

SB: He is still, absolutely, but very few actors seem to be able to get hold of him now. Nowadays with movie actors, their jobs are so much easier. Sometimes on film you do have to be pretty good, but to act for film is so much easier, it’s just a form of behaviourism. When the truly great actors who made their mark, like Gielgud and Schofield and Olivier, they became stronger as human beings as well as becoming stronger actors. As a result they were far more interesting people than any movie actor could ever be.

CF: Are there movie actors you can think of who would be an exception to that rule?

SB: Well, yes. Brando did, and I’m sure Pacino did to a certain extent. I found his Looking For Richard very entertaining, and I felt it was a very interesting analysis of Richard, and an interesting document of his frustration because he wanted to play Richard very much.

CF: Is there one Shakespearean villain who stands above the rest in ther capacity for evil?

SB: Well, I suppose Richard III is the most satanic of them all. He’s the cleverest, he’s the sharpest, he’s the most ruthless and cold-blooded. He is probably the archetype when it comes to pure evil. Obviously, Shakespeare juggled around with the historical facts in order to fashion a Jacobean-style villain, but he would be the one that’s closest to the Pol Pots and the Saddam Husseins.