We soon invoked Garrick, that evening at the
Maddermarket, Norwich, two Mondays back (9th October).
Macready, Forbes Robertson, yes, we saw
another Edwin Booth in full fig. What a
Prince of Players did there invite his multifarious
soul. Without a note or a prop he orated, cajoled,
strutted and mimicked his way through an illustrated
talk on the dastards of Shakespeare, populating the
empty stage with a gaggle of living beings. Without a
break except for a second to wipe the sweat and drain
a cup of water, for 95 minutes he displayed (while
the lighting changed from house lights
to a spot tinged with blood and back again) as if they were
film clips masterful cameos of his men. Yes, men,
amongst whom he included Lady Macbeth. There we
had for the price of one show Iago, that nice Scottish
couple, Dick Crookback, Shylock and Hamlet. (Hamlet
Berkoff labels a blackguard because he shows his
meanness of soul after mistakenly totalling Polonius
behind the arras by merely shrugging off the passing
of his putative future father-in-law, that 'honest
good old-man'.) Oberon was arraigned
last of all, as the first and most primitive dealer in Junk
which, lacking the guts himself, he'd had administered
through the agency of Puck.
We also got an account of Al Pacino's search for Richard
the King, and Berkoff incidentally brought Brando's orange
peel-chewing patriarch into the canon. (Why not? He
brought enough of the other celluloid dolls skewered with
his insight.) He also tossed in a casual aside to the
effect that his neighbour close to London Bridge, Sir
Ian McKellen, is so enveloped in a Shakespearean
carapace that he orders his half-pounds of butter as
if addressing a page.
Though Berkoff has all the roles off pat, the spiel in
between them he must improvise around. It was a night of
true interpretation and re-creation.
Even as an actor who's played and got paid for
a major role in a James Bond movie and as Hitler in
The Winds of War, Berkoff is a committed underdog and
eternally a student. A walking revolution. You get the
idea he is happiest in total control like this, the reins
tied around his waist and tonsils extended full stretch.
Amusingly he mimed pushing the great block of Olivier's
reputation off the stage for a minute--and sending a
vicious toe punt towards the spectre of 'Sir John'.
Though it's also realism when Berkoff's up there,
it's a gross, overpowering feast of exaggeration. Human
foibles so keenly observed and applied you can't see the join.
A Shylock's there anyone would heartily desire to give a
good kicking. And all of it rolled up with a
guttersnipe-like sense of humour.
The most hilarious sequence of the night for me
involved Hamlet traipsing along shouting 'Mother! ...Mother!'
over and over as he rattled up a half-dozen flights of
steps, through connecting doors, along passageways (all
along the four sides of
the stage). Berkoff chose to shout for her in the
tones of a petulant north country paper boy eager for his
kippers.
Like Olivier, or Sinatra, he makes you wonder how he does it--
it's like he has a barrel organ out of which he cranks a constant
supply of flames and sparks, inserting them amongst lines you've
heard dozens of times and still surprising you.
We'd slid and slipped to the railway station in the rain, and
then from Norwich station to the digs. In dry gear we'd
tried to dodge more moisture on the way to an Indian then the
Maddermarket. But oh what glorious summer was there brought
in by this sun of East Cheap.
Iain Fisher maintains a Berkoff section on his website. Click here to visit it now.