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Home , Steven Berkoff

Jon Foley Sherman

Steven Berkoff, Choral Unity, and Modes of Governance

Steven Berkoff has remained a polarizing and influential figure in British theatre for almost forty years, yet his work has received scant critical attention despite its widespread imitation and regular appearance on British stages. In this article, Jon Foley Sherman identifies choral movement as a key element of Berkoffʼs signature aesthetic of exaggerated, precise, and violent movement and language. Tracing a trajectory from his 1971 experiments with Agamemnon to his direction of , this article analyzes the uses to which choral movement has been put, and reveals a startling political development in Berkoffʼs work that belies the consistency of his chorusʼs manner of moving. His commitment to a particular kind of ensemble performance not only altered the political valences of his source texts, it eventually resulted in a stark assessment of self- government that is rendered more problematic by Berkoffʼs deployment of polyracial casts. Jon Foley Sherman is a visiting assistant professor at Beloit College; he recently earned a PhD in theatre and drama at Northwestern University, where his dissertation proposed a phenomenology of stage presence in contemporary performance. One of Jacques Lecoqʼs last students, he is also the artistic director of Sprung Movement Theatre.

We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a Coriolanus, the first of which starred Chris - power that we have no power to do. topher Walken at the Public Theatre in New 4 5 Coriolanus, II, iii, – York, the last of which featured himself in the starring role.1 Berkoff’s treatment of the THESE paradoxical words are spoken by the Roman crowd may be traced to his particular Third Citizen in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus as style of theatre, one that features rigorously a Roman crowd prepares itself to receive the trained ensembles executing exaggerated and obeisance of a mighty patrician general come precise movement sequences. In particular, to beg their support. The Third Citizen Berkoff emphasizes the coordinated speech responds to the claim that the throng may and movement of unnamed characters, which deny Coriolanus if they like by saying they he identifies as ‘choral’ work. The genesis of could but they can’t: it is up to the citizens to this style, however, sits far from both the text decide Coriolanus’s political future and yet of Coriolanus and the contexts in which they will have no choice but to support him Berkoff directed it. as Consul if he deigns to show them wounds This article undertakes an analysis of such he has endured in combat for the city’s life. choruses both in Berkoff’s Coriolanus and in The operation of will within systems of his version of Agamemnon, one of the first political coercion sits at the heart of this plays in which he developed his commit - prickly play and poses a problem for its ment to choral movement.2 Figuring a directors: how to depict the ‘many-headed trajectory from Agamemnon through Coriolanus multitude’ (II, iii, 15) both as a political unit not only provides a genealogy for the move - and in its interactions with the apparatus of ment style of the latter production, it estab- state power? Steven Berkoff, the celebrated lishes an artistic and political milieu from but notoriously ‘difficult’ British director, which Berkoff made a marked departure. performer, playwright, and memoirist, has Situating the genesis of Berkoff’s choral attempted to address this question over the style in the milieu of anti-war sentiment in course of three different productions of 1960s and 1970s provides a starting

232 ntq 26:3 (august 2010) © cambridge university press doi:10.1017/S0266464X10000436 point for a development that leads from an movement instructor Claude Chagrin and ethos of resistance to a policy of complicity. her teacher, Jacques Lecoq. Eager to provide In parti cular, this article will address how in himself with the kinds of opportunities these works the chorus’s dramatic and revealed by his training and increasingly dramaturgical functions are determined by bitter about his inability to secure full-time their physical disposition: not simply where employment in the theatre establishment, he they are but how. founded the London Theatre Group (LTG).5 Performance scores for the choruses in With his adaptation of these productions will be reconstructed using in 1968, Berkoff began a string of critically the published play texts, reviews, photo - lauded Kafka adaptations that included Meta- graphs, and videos in order to argue that their morphosis (1969) and (1973). After points of contact and departure reveal a other adaptations, which included Agamem - striking shift in Berkoff’s depiction of citi - non (1973), Berkoff began writing his own zens and soldiers. Detailing this shift not plays, gaining particular notoriety for his only offers suggestive perspectives on the ‘cockney carnival’ plays such as East (1975) source texts, it addresses the political com - and Greek (1980), a version of Oedipus set in plexities of performance adaptation, the the East End, featuring Berkoff’s by now intric acies of which were complicated by trademark physicality and brutal language.6 Berkoff’s forays into polyracial casting. In 1979, he began an engagement with It also presents an opportunity to engage Shakespeare that would see stylized pro duc - critically with the work of a theatre artist tions of (1979–82), Coriolanus (1988/ widely copied and referenced and yet strik- 1991/1995), Richard II (1994/2005), and ingly under-represented in scholarship. His Shake speare’s Villains (1998–), one of a series plays are regularly produced at venues large of one-man shows that Berkoff devised and and small, academic and commercial, and performed in the 1990s. From the 1970s on - they form a staple of the Edinburgh Fringe wards, Berkoff toured worldwide and took Festival. Indeed, the accessibility of his work on directing abroad and in London; he also and the popular success of many of his oversaw the publication of his adaptations pieces have earned Berkoff many imitators, and scripts in several languages and started making him one of the group of artists who writing numerous memoirs and editing pro - helped lay the groundwork for the surge of duction journals for publication. physical theatre in 1980s London.3 None - Referring regularly to a desire to use his theless, almost all of the texts on Berkoff’s whole instrument as an actor, Berkoff’s plays work appear in British newspapers (to which and his direction require virtuosic physical Berkoff himself is a frequent contributor) or control, almost always displayed in exten - as reviews, and none of them has featured a sive use of mime. He argues that, ‘Mime sustained analysis of how his movement demands exactness as any ritual must since it style informs the politics of his productions.4 is mutually shared with the audience whose imaginative participation is required to make it live.’7 His use of costume often Elements of a Style serves to highlight the actor’s body, leaving Berkoff began his career as a student at the arms, legs, and sometimes torsos exposed. Webber Douglas Academy in London, after Given the nature of his scripts, the actions which he spent a decade (1958–68) playing enacted are often brutal and exaggerated, sporadically in repertory theatres across involving a ‘large’ style often characterized England, occasionally landing film and by freezes and poses of easily identifiable television roles. Inspired by Peter Brook’s attitudes and actions. experimental Theatre of Cruelty season at the In keeping with his belief in mime, Berkoff London Academy of Music and Dramatic prefers a bare stage with a few chairs and Art (LAMDA) during 1963 and 1964, he rarely uses built settings – the notable excep - sought further training, notably with the tion being the abstracted cage/jungle-gym

233 for Gregor’s room in Metamorphosis. Berkoff to an individual character’s third-person writes: narra tion of his actions as ‘choral’. Virtually any spatial or temporal transformation that is A set that is solid seems a dead weight on a stage enacted by a group of performers constitutes whose message should lie in what is imaginative ‘choral’ work for him: a chorus may thus be a and ephemeral. It cannot be moved and seems an absurd piece of evidence to remind an audience of group of characters, a group of bodies, a duo, time and space.8 or a single person. The salient point here is that a chorus is an internally directed and With his stark visual style he sought to stimu- purposeful group moving and speaking with late his audiences through movement and one intention. It is in this sense that I will use image. In a revealing passage he claims: the terms ‘chorus’ and ‘choral’. In his plays with smaller casts, the shift Only by stretching the audience’s imagination to between character and chorus tends natur - its fullest can one hope to entrap the enemy: by ally to depersonalize secondary characters, working the vulnerable underbelly of the audi - ence, its emotions and then its insatiable hunger for leaving them clearly at the service of the visual stimulation, and then, finally, the words protagonist. In these plays, the use of ‘choral’ themselves.9 movement serves less to establish a commu- nity against or for whom the protagonist Consistent with Berkoff’s chosen role as an moves than to illustrate his (it’s always a outsider, the audience is characterized as an man) inner state. The protagonist forges his antagonist whose lack of will both makes identity by means of, not against, the chorus. them resistant to theatre and especially sus - Berkoff’s work is thus shot through with ceptible to its power, a power Berkoff claims an Expressionist streak, requiring actors to to marshal through image and then sound. em body interior states and environments This often results in dialogue and exposition against which the protagonist struggles.10 In accompanied by mime sequences doubling his Agamemnon and Coriolanus, however, the or commenting on the text. The vision served chorus exists as a character itself. Rather than by these sequences has remained fairly vio - being embodied by named characters who lent. His productions are populated by thugs, sporadically illustrate environments or inter- grossly inadequate fathers, and women alter- nal states, the choruses here are a collective nately fearsome and masochistic. His use of who appear as a dramatic entity in relation mime, large gestures, and strong vocal work to the protagonist. binds his characters to their actions and renders them as clear and straightforward as ‘Ghosts of Men who Died for Nothing’ 11 his tableaux vivants. ’ Agamemnon, the first part of the only extant Athenian trilogy, the Oresteia, Berkoff’s Concept of the ‘Choral’ provided Berkoff with strong material for a The rigorous training and ensemble coordi na - chorus. It received its first staging in 458 bc, tion required by this work reflects Berkoff’s arriving within ten years of the introduction commitment to the actor as the most dyna mic of the second and third characters in Athenian scenic element. For Berkoff, a tightly drilled drama, and thus featured extended passages group of performers is best positioned to for the chorus, which was figured both as carry off the work of a chorus, responsible instrument of exposition and political unit for swiftly changing onstage locales and within the story. providing opposition for (anti-) hero pro- Aeschylus does not even bring on the tagonists facing the forces of society ranged eponymous, doomed hero until well past against them. half way through the play. If any character Berkoff claims to use choral effects in could be said to dominate the play, it is many of his scripts, describing every thing Clytemnestra, whose confrontations with the from background noise to group movement chorus display her will and her strength.

234 Indeed, as Edith Hall argues, the represen - there are five occasions (the Episodes) when tation of an ‘autonomous, proactive, amoral, the chorus stands as a dramatic entity. In the and politically triumphant queen’ would first four of these, they are chiefly witnesses, likely have been so outlandish to the first expressing alternately their disbelief, their Athenian audiences that the play was either gratitude, or their fear, while maintaining a dropped from the trilogy or never performed posture that keeps them free from influencing without its companion pieces, in which she events. Only in the last Episode, their con- is not only vanquished but her murderous fron tation with Clytemnestra and Aegisthus crime expiated by Athena in the act of after the murders of Agamemnon and Cass- establishing both the Athenian courts and andra, do they appear capable of action or the rules of citizenship through patrimony.12 altering a character’s behaviour or the course of events. But their promise of revolt is short- lived: Clytemnestra halts them before Aegis- The Chorus in Agamemnon thus’s guards can cut them down, and they The chorus possesses the majority of the text are left offering further ‘ill-omened’ speech. in the Aeschylus, and yet to a twentieth- (or While Berkoff maintained versions of these twenty-first) century reader, for most of their scenes, he redistributed the chorus’s dramatic time on stage they serve less as characters weight by moving them back and forth in than as engines of exposition: their songs time. In place of singing extended choral recount the history of the House of Atreus, odes, they acted out the passages that are Paris’s abduction of Helen, how Agamem - spoken as memory in the Aeschylus; in place non slaughtered his daughter Iphigenia to of attempts at ‘right utterance’ they enact. free the Greek fleet from Aulis, and the Argive In effect, there are two choruses: the ‘first’ population grown restive and weary from chorus of Argive elder men, and the ‘second’ years of war and loss. chorus of Greek and Trojan soldiers. David Raeburn reminds us that choral The action subsequent to the conflict bet- speech was both connected to the ritual func - ween Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, already tion of the festival in which the plays were a large portion of the choral speech and song, first performed and that it was explicitly becomes the heart of the play, with the used in ritual onstage in the last two plays of battles in front of and in Troy staged as set the Oresteia.13 He argues that ‘We accept that pieces for the production. Where Aeschylus’ the principle of euphemia, right utter ance, chorus addressed sacrifice through third- applies as much to what the solo actors have person song, Berkoff’s warrior chorus per - to say as it does to the Chorus’. Thus, the formed acts of sacrifice in the first person, choral speeches are less about recounting appropriating the larger portion of choral history than actively attempting to provide speech for (re)enactment. Indeed, Jonathan good omens for their king. The chorus’s Hammond found that the production ‘relies speech constitutes events insofar as the too much for its overall effect on imagina - chorus ‘keep[s] trying, though failing, to use tively choreographed battle scenes’.15 propitious language’. Their inability to speak Berkoff’s emphasis on the chorus as dram- anything other than ‘ill-omened’ language atic unit takes place during a ‘performative enacts the unstoppable tide of doom about to turn’ away from the ‘static solemnity’ of crash down on their king, whose actions are mid-century choruses.16 It was also, Berkoff the subject of much of the chorus’s speech.14 notes, part of his response to the ascendant Yet, even in these moments the chorus is practices of the celebrated London and New not a character in the narrative: they reflect York theatrical fringes of the 1960s and its drift and prepare the stage for Agamem- 1970s.17 He was surrounded by examples of non’s arrival. It is not that the chorus speech theatre companies resisting the dominant itself dooms Agamemnon, but rather that it resident company model embodied by the reflects his inevitable punishment. Outside Royal Shakespeare Company, which in prac- these speeches (the Parodos and the Stas ima), tice became a star-making machine that drew

235 a chosen few ‘up’ from the ranks (from the according to Berkoff, of invention and excite - chorus) and into plum roles.18 In contrast, ment on stage. There seems no questioning companies such as Freehold, 7:84, and Berkoff’s sense of outrage, and yet its free- Welfare State featured ensembles rather than floating quality perhaps speaks to concerns individuals. more personal than communal: he was not These companies, and Berkoff’s LTG, were only willing to attack the political leadership active during a period when ‘collectives’ of England, but to break a British Actors’ referred first to political and social units and Equity 1997 strike by recording a voice-over then to theatrical modes of production. Theat- for McDonald’s, a company he has subse - rical collaboration was understood to be as quently vilified. much a political choice as an artistic one, and Thus, when Berkoff writes in his introduc - was staged in opposition not simply to other tion to the published script of Agamemnon theatrical models but also to political ones.19 that it is ‘about heat and battle, fatigue, the The increasingly prominent appearance of marathon, and the obscenity of modern and group speech and movement in British and future wars’, he may be understood to be United States theatre coincided with mul - taking advantage of the conflict in Vietnam tiple crises across the globe with which the as a pretext rather than a subject.24 In terms two countries were directly involved. In the of the play, Berkoff’s concentration on the case of both countries, their governments chorus shifts the focus from the inescapable often took actions against the will of many of consequences of a conflict between duty and their citizens.20 Berkoff’s Agamemnon was family embodied by Agamemnon’s original thus devised at the beginning of the Troubles sin – the murder of his daughter Iphigenia to in Ireland and at the tail end of the fiercest release his fleet from Aulis. Instead, the opposition to the war in Vietnam, in a London performance concentrates on the plight of theatre scene that had nurtured anti-war the nameless soldiers who butchered each protest and rhetoric for years. other before the walls of Troy and the return - ing Greeks of Agamemnon’s party who were drowned at sea. A Free-Floating Sense of Outrage The lengthy battle sequences diminish the Berkoff maintains an ambivalent relation - space left to the choral song of Iphigenia’s ship with overtly political theatre. On the sacrifice, downplaying Clytemnestra’s search one hand, he has disparaged the ‘obsessively for vengeance and emphasizing the slaugh- realistic, plausible, social, and naturalistic’ ter of the soldiers. Through their reenact- productions through which much British ments and their opposition to Clytemnestra, theatre staged political opposition.21 He also the chorus achieves a kind of solidarity based claimed that art bears no allegiance to any- on class (lower vs. upper) and sex (male vs thing, that ‘it is a selfish, grasping thing’.22 female). The chorus becomes the main char - And yet there is no mistaking the overtly acter of the piece. political content of Agamemnon and his 1980s Berkoff weighted his production process critiques of Thatcherite England. In addition accordingly: creating the chorus for the to Greek and Decadence – both savaging the London productions, he spent weeks in societal depredations resulting from Thatch- rehearsal engaged with exercises and impro- er ism – Sink the Belgrano! (1986) directly visations.25 Although he turned from this concerns the Falklands War and features a practice as he became a director for hire, at (characteristically, for Berkoff, grotesque) this point he fervently believed that a chorus portrayal of Thatcher.23 could only achieve the precision and cohesion Nonetheless, Berkoff was preoccupied necessary to their task through prolonged less with political action than with his own physical training and exploration.26 The arri- artistic expression: his disdain for ‘political’ val of Agamemnon and his cohort exempli - theatre was not that it addressed contem - fied the powerful physicality displayed by porary issues, but that it did so at the cost, the warrior chorus. For this entrance, the

236 chorus mimed a troop of horses galloping and the bodily contact was less abstracted across the Argive plain in a prolonged and and more animalistic: hand-to-hand combat intense display; in the Roundhouse produc - in a tangle of limbs with little or no room tion, they wore ‘elongated horse masks’ and between the actors’ bodies.30 Yet even when were accompanied by drums and ‘brass the poles were removed, the battles were not instruments screaming’.27 merely free-for-alls but highly choreographed In his hyperbolic stage directions, Berkoff tableaux. These tableaux, in fact, may be the indicates that the entrance is to be so gruel - source of the critical discontent with the first ling that chorus members risk heart failure.28 London production (they are mentioned This entrance repeated that of the Herald explicitly as a ‘bad idea’ in a review of the who must run in place for five minutes before Los Angeles production).31 delivering his two-page speech. Of these two moments, James F. Gaines wrote: The Chorus Overawed The Run of the Herald turns every strained muscle into a study in pain and an omen of impending While his goal was to portray ‘the obscenity death. The thundering arrival of Agamemnon and of modern and future wars’, his style risks his cavalry in Argos is . . . [an] effective expres sion of portraying battle, despite the bloody langu - 29 the brute force of war. age accompanying it, as an abstract contest. Writing of Berkoff’s work up to 1976, John By transforming from Argive elders into sol - Elsom notes that Berkoff diers, the chorus is at the heart not only of the narrative, but also the action, set in was particularly concerned with carefully organ- tableaux of battle and massacre. Sometimes ized movement patterns, performed by the group accompanying their own description, some- in a style which was not quite dance, not quite times acting out the narration of the Herald, army drill, and involved some mime. Improvis a - 32 the (second) chorus embodies the strain and tion would have been out of step as well. savagery of battle, rendering both conquer- ing Greeks and vanquished Trojans victims Considering this appraisal next to Jonathan of the same brutality. Hammond’s critique of Agamemnon above, Through extended movement sequences one begins to understand why the ‘chaos’ featuring freeze-frame or tableaux, slow Berkoff sought to portray did not material - motion, and vocal work accompanied by ize: the tidiness of the choreography pro- drums, Berkoff choreo graphed the struggles vided a mask for the violence and suffering it between soldiers, and between sailors and represented.33 the sea. During these sequences, the chorus Enacting both sides of battle, the warrior fought itself, with indi vidual members dying chorus turned relentlessly in on itself, shat- over and over again, rising to kill another tering in a manner echoed later by the elder and dying yet again, their constant chorus’s disorganization facing Clytemnestra. ‘resurrection’ conveying both the futility and Whereas the warriors’ deaths are mourned endlessness of battle. as a useless compliance with authority, the Berkoff’s approach to the battle sequences elders splinter when attempting to overcome changed over the course of the different pro- authority. Both choruses are less the embodi- ductions: in addition to mime, a constant in ment of the ‘tensions between the individual all productions, he originally gave the chorus and the collective’34 than a character in the wooden poles with which they created lines unequal contest between ruler and ruled. of tension and contact between their bodies Their inability to organize except at the in battle. The poles appear to have worked as behest of their rulers condemns the chorus to figurative vectors of force as well as literal the cycle of violence they hoped had ended spears in combat. In the Israeli pro duction, with the destruction of Troy. When the Herald the poles were removed, the actors given announces the Greek victory, the chorus of football shoulder pads under their costumes, elders asks:

237 Have you not seen the end of evil whose fate is at once inevitable and avoid- the end of pride able, and they join Agamemnon’s first victim will you stick your fingers to your head Iphigenia among the ranks of the play’s when some asshole with a stripe slithers by will you stick your fingers in the fire unjustly killed. Enacting their own countless it’s just the same . . . deaths only to revive and slaughter and be no more . . . no more horrors.35 slaughtered again, they are self-aware but powerless pawns of forces they have chosen But they are as awed by Clytemnestra as the to obey; hoping for peace they are nonethe- soldiers are by Agamemnon: the chorus wilts less willing to fight on command. Their in front of their leaders. The Greek soldiers tragedy is not so much that they struggle burn with resentment at their slaughter for against forces stronger than they, but that Helen’s recovery, but this never builds to they do not fight hard enough against those action, as it is replaced by eager support of they can. their leader when in his presence. And Berkoff’s Agamemnon staged the fate of though aware of their exploitation by the rul- citizens that follow a leader who has no use ing class, the Argive citizens are tied hope- for their opinions. It did so, first, at a time lessly to the fates of their kings and queens. when anti-war protest across Western Europe When the chorus hears Agamemnon’s cries and the United States was perceived as as Clytemnestra butchers him offstage, they incap able of checking the United States briefly consider revolt before deciding: government’s continued dedication to blood- shed in Southeast Asia. The chorus’s obedi- We cannot bring him back to life. True, so what do we do? ence to this kind of authority results in their Think. Make our enquiries first.36 violent, avoidable deaths; they turn against themselves in mimed sequences of battle Upon Clytemnestra’s confirmation of the with Trojan and Greek ground into the same murder, the chorus insults her and attempts dust. Victory is a bitter and meaningless to shout her out of the city, but the arrival of reward for an enslaved people. her lover and conspirator, Aegisthus, quashes In a telling aside at the end of the play, their protest. This is a striking departure Clytemnestra urges Aegisthus to ‘Ignore the from Aeschylus’ version, where the Chorus mob’.37 A chorus is no mob, possessed of howls in protest and readies to fight Aegis - greater coherence and an inner drive. And thus and his bodyguard before Clytemnestra yet this is the condition to which Berkoff intervenes and stops what would have been reduced this chorus by staging its inability to the slaughter of the choral assembly ready to organize itself against another unjust ruler; give their lives. they lose their cohesion and fall to pieces Not only does Berkoff refuse Clytem - (be)for(e) one murderer after another. nestra her ability to halt the chorus with her words, turning instead to the bullwhip- ‘Pluck out the Multitudinous Tongue’38 wielding Aegisthus, he also depicts the chorus of Argive elders as more powerless No such tragedy befalls the Roman citizens than in Aeschylus. We do not see them try to of Berkoff’s Coriolanus. These men, in con- rise against their oppressor; instead, they trast, do not deserve the leader they are given, snipe and mutter darkly but remain without choosing instead the manipulating and resolve. They are left to bemoan that the un - deceit ful tribunes. For an already notoriously stoppable tide of violence will continue until anti-democratic play, Berkoff ratcheted up the house of Atreus is once again purged by the politics of individual virtue and group blood. weakness even further, and did so precisely This Agamemnon had a new tragic hero. by transforming a Roman mob into a chorus. Transformed from the weak elders left behind Berkoff wrote in The Theatre of Steven into soldiers fighting for their lives, the war- Berkoff that he conceived of Coriolanus as a rior chorus occupies the role of a character series of binary conflicts: ‘Plebeians versus

238 Autocrat, State versus Individual, Aufidius sus, with potent political implications. versus Coriolanus, mother versus son’, and In reviews positive and negative, critics that the Chorus ‘is central to the play’.39 He described Berkoff’s chorus as moving ‘in a notes elsewhere that he spent a great deal of synchronized shuffle’42 with an ‘automaton time training and devising with this chorus, rigi dity’43 and ‘explosive energy contained as he did with Agamemnon.40 by rigid discipline’44 in ‘sharply choreo - What appears novel here is that there is graphed movement [as] an excellent, tightly not, strictly speaking, a chorus in Coriolanus. drilled company’.45 During the Munich pro- Shakespeare’s Roman citizens nowhere in duction, Berkoff noted in his journals: the play function as a classic chorus: they do not sing ritual songs portraying past events, Now, quite normally – and it’s satisfying to watch – they do not serve as witnesses to action, nor they are starting to think and perform like a body. do they provide exposition. They neither offer They suggest, remember for each other, correct and adjust as if the body were repairing its own mediation between the action on different wounds.46 areas of the stage nor do they effect changes of locale or time. All of these actions require Even in the opening scene, where the crowd the concerted effort of an internally directed argues with itself, Berkoff had them moving group, a quality that appeared and dissolved so that they appeared as a whole rather than at key moments in Berkoff’s Agamemnon. as fractured parts. William Over wrote of the On the contrary, Shakespeare’s ‘rabble’ New York production: are characterized by their inability to operate in concert at all. They are unruly, dispute Although the effect was to demonstrate the fickle - amongst themselves, are possessed of fickle ness of the Roman citizenry, a manifestation of the and divided loyalties, and, most importantly, irrational forces that shape public opinion, the they do not present a coherent standpoint movement of the acting ensemble in this scene was 47 from which to oppose Coriolanus or the precisely choreographed, as in Greek tragedy. tribunes. Indeed, they prove capable again and again of changing their principles in This sense of unified precision acts counter response to both argument and coercion. to the undisciplined citizens depicted in However, in the context of a state strug - Shakespeare’s text and results in a different gling to find a robust form of governance, the role for the assembled crowd. Both in the text crowd’s instability need not signify weak - and on Berkoff’s stage, the mob is weak and ness: as several commentators argue, the very requires leadership; in the former, however, ability of the citizens to debate and accom - the structure of that leadership and its rela- modate more than one viewpoint stands in tion ship to the crowd is at issue. For Berkoff, contrast to the single bloody-mindedness of who channelled the crowd’s many voices their chief antagonists and ‘could be a into one, the issue of leadership is clear. strength to a free republic’.41 Garry Wills, in his review of the New York As the Agamemnon of Aeschylus required production, complained that in the Shake- a chorus through whom to communicate the speare, ‘The Roman people . . . are not a march of fate, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus single “character”,’ as Berkoff had staged required a fractious crowd to portray Rome’s them.48 By making them into this single char- political situation. The crowd’s disorganiz- acter, Berkoff renders the crowd incapable of ation is central to the action of Shakespeare’s offering a dynamic mode of political dis- play, which repeatedly stages the questions course as an alternative to the authoritar- of what relationship rulers should have with ianism of the patricians. They are instead citizens and how the state is organized. By simply a negative force, a threat to Corio - incorporating his familiar choral technique lanus rather than a viable political model into the staging of the Roman crowd, how - worthy of sympathy or respect. Their oppo- ever, Berkoff appears to have disrupted the sition to Coriolanus, already tinged with per - portrayal of a crowd that is seeking consen- sonal dislike in Shakespeare’s text, becomes

239 both wholly capricious and personal, un- government, but between the people and related to the merits of any political system their own wishes: ‘The institutionalization of or to the citizens’ legitimate grievances. popular power transforms the citizens . . . into the fickle and confused rabble Corio - lanus scorns.’52 The Question of Governance And yet Berkoff’s habits of choral move - In the place of contrasting modes of gover - ment do more than question the probity of nance Berkoff instead stages a contest over representative government; they also deny whether Coriolanus should be the leader of the citizens whatever wisdom and deserved the city state. The question of the play confidence they had before their subversion resolves to whether or not Coriolanus is fit to by the tribunes. Arnold argues that ‘political rule, not whether a single man should wield representation turns the citizens into a mind - so much power over the state or what other less, undifferentiated chorus’, but, as I have alternatives might best suit Rome. As Steve argued here, Berkoff stages this chorus from Cavell points out, a united chorus simplifies the beginning.53 Rather than finding himself the play’s political struggle to a question of adrift in the unruly public, hamstrung by his patricians versus plebeians – pre cisely the own sense of privilege and distance from binary Berkoff sought to emphasize.49 Stag - those he ranks below him, Coriolanus is ing the plebeians as a chorus, he changes and confronted with an ungrateful mob whose coarsens the political argument of the play frailty and irrationality serve to endorse by opposing Coriolanus with a homogenous autho ritarian rule.54 entity that obscures the principle and dyna - Staged as a formless, chaotic mass, the mics of republican government. mob may represent the uncertainty and dis - To be sure, the merits of the tribunate are quiet of republicanism, a troubled but poten- by no means clear in Shakespeare’s text. tially productive form of government: the Oliver Arnold notes that critical opinion has spectacle, as well as the content, of public recently shifted from regarding the play as debate encourages participation and dialogue hopelessly slanted against the crowd to an amongst informed citizenry. Once they are understanding of the play as an eloquent depicted as a misguided majority, however, plea for the broader enfranchisement of the Coriolanus’s ‘refusal to temporize with them’ citizens.50 And yet later arguments, such as becomes ‘an act not so much of class arro - Annabel Patterson’s – that Shakespeare un - gance as moral integrity’.55 Additionally, the abash edly celebrates the plebeians and choral unity magnified their internal weak - ‘republican political theory’ –founder on ness in confrontation with the patricians, closer examination of what happens to the who single-handedly dispatch them. plebeians once they are given political Whether staged as Coriolanus scattering representation.51 According to Arnold, the the mob in the market like a strong breeze crowd in Coriolanus is indeed self-aware, cleaning the clock of a dandelion, or the pat- pluralistic, and capable of reason. Until, that rician Menenius arresting their momentum is, they are granted representation by the across stage with his rhetoric, these plebeians tribunes, whose appetite for power and dis - have no strength in numbers. By bind ing gust for the plebeians matches that of the them through movement while not granting patricians. them any moral strength, Berkoff presents a The crowd, after all, did not even seek citizenry with nothing to offer but their pos - political representation at the play’s opening: sible manipulation. their goals were access to corn and the death Just as in Agamemnon, the same performers of the patrician Coriolanus (at the opening of portray the citizen chorus and a martial the play still Caius Martius) who most cohort, both the Roman and Volscian armies. opposed them (I, i, 4–80). They are, in effect, Wills argued that this ‘promiscuous’ mul- co-opted by a new class of politician which tiple role-playing flattens distinctions bet - intervenes not only between ‘the people’ and ween different characters and political groups,

240 Coriolanus (Christopher Walken) and his loyal men in the 1988–89 Public Theatre Production. Photo: Martha Swope.

but this assumes Berkoff and the Public On the one hand, the Roman citizen Theatre had the resources to hire an enor- chorus moved with the same ‘conformism’ mous cast that would include, separately, a as the soldiers.57 However, in their two con - Roman mob, a Roman army, and a Volscian frontations with Coriolanus, he beats them army.56 Doing so would have been no less either verbally or physically. Again, the over- promiscuous, albeit with the producer’s all cohesion of the mob deepens the effects in money instead of with the actors. In any the text: a disorganized mob that scatters is event, there seem to be significant distinc- acting as itself, but a coherent unit that fails tions between the portrayal of citizens and when confronting a lone man betrays itself soldiers; as in Agamemnon, these differences and appears to be little more than a chimera suggest a political argument, albeit one of a of power. Coriolanus is the one with true very different character. power, and the chorus cannot match him.

241 Berkoff’s staging of the battles, as in with a markedly polyracial cast.62 With the Agamemnon, highlights the differences bet - same men playing the Roman citizens and ween what are, in both pieces, essentially two the Roman soldiers, an uncomfortable scen - choruses. The combat in Coriolanus is not a ario unfolds. The Roman crowd in this stag - spectacle of pointless suffering but a demon - ing is an emblem of dysfunctional pluralism stration of strength and fraternity: the sol - working in concert only to thwart a rightful diers here are not victims of their leaders, but ruler. As I have argued, their regimented loyal followers bonding in combat. The movement here indicates weakness of will Roman soldiers do not die repeatedly, nor do instead of strength of purpose, while the they turn in on themselves: there are no drilled movements of the soldiers demon- victims, only adherents to the martial virtue strate the creation of a ‘body’ bound to its Coriolanus believes himself to exemplify. ‘head’ – Coriolanus. In other words, there is no cost to follow- The racial politics of the production are far ing this military leader – there is no butchery, from clear – the same ensemble portrayed no waste of lives. The two kinds of unified both choruses – but the presence of different movement depicted, that of the soldiers and races in the ensemble recasts Rome’s plight. that of the citizens, carry significantly dif - It is not simply that Rome requires a form of ferent meanings. Behind Cori o lanus, unity government removed from the will of its brings victory and honour. In front of Corio - people, but that a polyracial society functions lanus, unity speaks of manipulation, pervas - best without political representation.63 This ive fickleness, and ingratitude. conclusion becomes more difficult to avoid The fateful moments of this production no when we acknowledge how Berkoff cast longer depict a Coriolanus who ‘cannot or another role in the New York and the Leeds will not master a political style appropriate production (which was also polyracial): to the modern world’,58 but a strong leader Coriolanus’s antagonist in battle, the leader rejected by a public that cannot recognize of the Volscians, with whom he shares a kind their saviour when he appears to them. Of of grudging respect, was a black actor (Keith the New York production, Over wrote, ‘the David in New York, Colin McFarlane in Leeds audience felt an affinity with this Martius’,59 and London). Both David and McFarlane are and Frank Rich claimed that ‘our sympathies imposing figures with great vocal command, are with him’.60 making them ‘natural’ choices for the role. Berkoff’s productions are less concerned And yet, Coriolanus is not only superior to with Coriolanus’s arrogance preventing him Aufidius in battle, but their short-lived alli- from adjusting to the required manoeuvring of ance dissolves when Coriolanus is persuaded representative politics than with the in abi lity to spare Rome and is soon murdered by his of the citizens to recognize their betters. Faced once-again enemy. with the manipulating tribunes, who are This reading surely contravenes Berkoff’s played in Leeds as ‘the one weasel-like and intentions for the production and I am not quick to passion, the other driven by the icy suggesting that Berkoff himself bears these ambition of the political climber’, and upon feelings. However, as he does not address the whom Berkoff shovels scorn in his journals, issue of race in his writing on the produc- the chorus listens and obeys.61 Faced with tions of Coriolanus, his history of casting Coriolanus, a man who has, after all, saved choices and the written record elsewhere their city repeatedly, they simultaneously must speak for themselves. To be sure, he frac ture and revolt. writes warmly of his experiences working with African American casts in the United States, and his production of Richard II (1994), Race and Berkoff’s Choruses also at the Public Theatre in New York, cast a The weakness of this crowd takes on racial white Richard (Michael Stuhlbarg) against a overtones given that the New York produc- black Bolingbroke (Andre Braugher).64 While tion was the first in which Berkoff worked this repeats the dynamic of an eponymous

242 white character opposed by a black antago - heavy with Western ‘classics’ whose adapta - nist, this play in no way replicates the emo- tion by companies from different countries tional or political dynamics of Coriolanus – no could stand as a testament to their univers- one’s sympathies are with Aufidius, and ality; there were several productions of Bolingbroke goes on to become Henry IV. Shakespeare, as also of Athenian tragedy.68 Nonetheless, Berkoff’s choices as to when Berkoff’s Agamemnon, produced by LA to use mixed-race casts and when to use Theatre Works, was nonetheless an awkward monoracial ones may raise concerns about choice: untethered from the rest of the trilogy his insensitivity to the role race plays in the of which it forms a part, the play ends with dynamics of the cultures his plays depict. the authors of a double murder unpunished New York, Leeds, and London in the 1980s and the installation of a new tyrant. Even in and 1990s were all strongly multicultural the context of an Olympics boycotted by the cities and thus his productions reflected their Soviet bloc, this was strong stuff for a celeb - host cities’ racial compositions. Perhaps this ration of art ‘as an instrument of truth’.69 is what Berkoff meant when he claimed: ‘Like To read Berkoff’s account of his casting most directors, I feed on myself for ideas. But decision, it appears that the context of ath- the idea for the Chorus that is central to the letic spectacle provided the basis for his play and the ensemble acting that resulted decision to cast exclusively black actors. He was influenced by New York street life.’65 claimed that he decided on an all-black cast Given the marked similarities between the because ‘American blacks were fitter, stronger, chorus in this production and in Agamemnon, more physically alert . . . than their white it is hard to credit this observation other than compatriots’.70 as an indication of his choice to cast actors of While his pages of praise for the cast are more than one hue. The difficulty is that, in undoubtedly genuine, his perspec tive also their depiction of a troubled Rome, these partakes of the casual prejudice that pur- stagings of Coriolanus suggest that that city’s ports to praise African Americans for athlet - resistance to effective governance is a func- ic ism while simultaneously obscuring their tion of its heterogeneous population. The possession of qualities marked as ‘white’, polyvocality of the crowd is matched by its such as intelligence and reason. And Berkoff polyracial composition, a concurrence that knew it: ‘I am ready to plead guilty to any other productions might stage as a sign of charges that may be laid, in that I was look- the city’s strength. For Berkoff, however, the ing for athleticism, fervour, [and] com mu - crowd’s many voices are coordinated into a nity spirit for the Chorus and strong voices. simple opposition to Coriolanus, and their They had all of these qualities in “spades” many races are not represented as a flexible and it was one of the most enjoyable multiplicity but as a hardened bloc. experiences of my directing life.’71 Although the New York production was the first in which Berkoff had worked with a Trying to Erase Race polyracial cast, it was not the first time he had worked with non-white actors. His Los In his typically provocative manner, Berkoff Angeles production of Agamemnon featured asserts a racist lens as if it was a compliment an entirely African American cast, the only to the actors with whom he worked on the non-white, monoracial cast he has used in an production. While he continued work with English-speaking production.66 The produc - one of these actors, Roger Guenveur Smith, tion was part of the Olympic Arts Festival, in the New York production of Coriolanus, associated with the summer Olympic Games. this does little to dissipate the unsavoury The Festival involved over 1,500 artists and depictions of racially marked societies strug - 400 events, including thirty theatre com - gling, and failing, to benefit their citizens. In panies from fourteen different countries.67 the case of Agamemnon, where Berkoff had While the Festival explicitly attempted to previously used an all-white cast, the impact include work outside the mainstream, it was is not easy to gauge. Given the frame of the

243 Olympic Arts Festival, with its multinational There is no doubting the paucity of fully presentations of Athenian and Shakes pearean realized roles for African American actors in drama, the appearance of black actors in the 1980s Hollywood or indeed in United States production would not necessarily have stood theatre at the time, or that ‘playing blacks’ in as a binary opposite to the predominantly 1980s Los Angeles predominantly meant ful - white bodies used in United States stagings filling white fears of urban life. But by posi - of Athenian tragedy; with so many ‘other’ tioning himself as the only recourse these bodies on stage for the festival, white ones actors have for ‘classical’ acting, may not be considered a norm. Berkoff re-stages a familiar narrative in This poses its own problems, however: as which a lone white man is the only salvation Ric Knowles has written about the inter- for a benighted local black population. Even national touring circuit of the late twentieth if we take Berkoff at his word that the cast century, the specificity of a piece’s politics was as entranced by the experience as he and its constraints of production tend to be depicts them, this need hardly recommend obscured when it moves from one city to that the best they can hope for is erasing another.72 Particularly in a system such as blackness and being sub sumed into a neutral the Olympic Arts Festival it is easy to con- soup that is ‘the heri tage of every actor’ in clude, as Knowles does about international order to play ‘Greek’. touring in general, that the productions are mostly about themselves as theatrical com - Four Choruses, Two Governments modities; their specific political valences are flattened under the veneer of the technique Over two decades of work, the bodily form - and virtuosity audiences have come to the ations and trajectories of Berkoff’s choruses performance to admire.73 The Los Angeles lead from a tragedy of the collective to a Times review seems to confirm Knowles’s tragedy of an individual. Dictatorial rule in argument, and Dan Sullivan asserted: Agamemnon binds one chorus in senseless slaughter staged in lengthy sequences; it Berkoff did well in choosing a non-white cast for simultaneously fractures the citizen chorus his adaption of the play, and not just because the in hopeless abjection during scenes of hesitant Greek classics are the heritage of every actor. interrogation. In contrast, dictatorial rule in Agamemnon is a play about a long pointless war, and the black faces in Agamemnon’s army make a Coriolanus offers the sole salvation to the point for an American [sic] audience.74 choruses, thrusting one into synchronized and efficient killing and another into synch- But what this point is, Sullivan never says. ron ized and inefficient resistance. Here, The result is that black ‘faces’ are not black unquestioned obedience results in glory and after all, but simply those of ‘the Greeks’, thoughtful deliberation has been banished whose society at the time of Agamemnon’s from the citizens. first performance was notable among other In both pieces there are two choruses, one things for the pronounced ownership and martial and one civilian, and throughout all trade of slaves. the productions the choruses move with Berkoff reinforces Sullivan’s reading when rigidity, cohesion, and precision. And yet the he claims that the actors were, significance of this single movement style changes radically over the productions. In above all, and very much above all, glad not to be Agamemnon, the martial chorus is locked into playing blacks. They were classical actors and war - a death-struggle with itself while the Argive riors and performers and would seldom have the elders are unable to muster their unity to chance again to play in the theatre. . . . The actors gain freedom from their unjust rulers. In talk about it to this day and refer to it as the high Coriolanus, the martial chorus is bound for point of their theatrical lives. I wish there was some way I could regroup them. They returned to glory while the Roman citizens are con- playing blacks once more or dope fiends, tap demned for opposing their rightful ruler. It dancers, and muggers.75 appears, then, that while maintaining the

244 presentation of choral work, Berkoff’s pro - Precision and unity signify tragic strength duc tions undergo a startling political devel - in Agamemnon while in Coriolanus they signal op ment: the dedication to developing an weakness; in the former, the failure to resist effective performing cohort no longer serves their leader condemns the chorus while in a democratic or even a republican vision of the latter this resistance itself condemns governance, but one that glorifies a militar - them. ‘Ignore the mob,’ Clytemnestra tells ized state whose existence can only survive Aegisthus after they take power: ‘they quake under the rule of a despot uncon cerned with and quell / you and I are in power darling / his people. In light of the most negative we shall order things well.’79 Whether they are descriptions of Berkoff in rehearsal, this sug- capable of doing so, the leaders in these pro - gests his own development from director of ductions remain untouched by their citi zens, an ensemble, the London Theatre Group, to whose voices are silenced and whose bodies director for hire.76 are ordered too well. Berkoff’s professed identification with the actor-managers Henry Irving, Edmund Kean, and Jean-Louis Barrault indicates that he may Notes and References have come to envision himself as precisely 1. Berkoff restaged Coriolanus over a seven-year the kind of autocrat exemplified by his span. He first directed the play for the New York Public Corio lanus: at home with like-minded fol - Theatre as part of their ‘Shakespeare Marathon’ season of 1988–89. Following the success of this production, he lowers and impatient with any feedback not was invited to stage it again in Munich, where it pre - to his liking. In his regular professions of miered in 1991 to further acclaim. As he wrote in his admiration for ensemble work and the journal of the Munich production, he was beginning to covet the central role for himself, and in 1995 he staged camaraderie of rehearsal, Berkoff has argued the production in Leeds with himself starring as Corio- for the value of experimentation and using lanus; the production later moved to the Mermaid in all the powers of the actor.77 But it must be London in 1996. See Steven Berkoff, Coriolanus in Deutschland (Oxford; London: Amber Lane Press, 1992), admitted that his protestations of commit- p. 22. ment to collective artistic endeavour begin to 2. Berkoff’s first work on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon thin out as he ages, and in some of his paeans was presented as a student workshop at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1971. From this to ensemble-driven work his references to experience, he fashioned his own adaptation, work ing ‘unity’ and ‘loyalty’ imply that he takes the with a group of actors that included some former greatest pleasure from a sense of being sup- students from Webber Douglas and actors who had passed through a workshop audition. The first presen - ported rather than challenged and surprised. tation was at a Manchester arts festival in 1973, followed Robert Cross, in the only book-length by a run at the Roundhouse in London that same year. treat ment of Berkoff and his theatre, argues In 1976, another version was staged at the Greenwich Theatre, also in London. Berkoff directed the play two vigorously that the only actor Berkoff has more times, in (1979) and Los Angeles (1984); in all ever wanted to see using all his power is but these last two productions, Berkoff played the role of Agamemnon. Berkoff himself, and that Berkoff has since 3. 1960 See, for example, Lyn Gardner, ‘“Anyone of Any the late s advocated an individualistic Quality Feels an Outsider”: Lyn Gardner Meets Steven politics, his numerous and pungent criticisms Berkoff, Great Lost Hope of British Drama’, The of Thatcherite England notwithstanding.78 Guardian, 15 September 1999; Hugh Morrison, Directing in the Theatre, 2nd ed. (London; New York: A. & C. Black; Notably, however, Cross avoids a move- Theatre Arts Books, 1984), p. 151; Dymphna Callery, ment analysis of Agamemnon and Coriolanus Through the Body: a Practical Guide to Physical Theatre (as indeed of the chorus in any of Berkoff’s (New York; London: Routledge; Nick Hern, 2001), p. 7; and Fiona Macintosh, ‘Oedipus in the East End’, in pieces). As I have argued here, just this kind Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third of analysis offers a more complex under- Millennium, ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh, and standing both of Berkoff’s politics as well as Amanda Wrigley (Oxford: , 2004), p. 327. The term ‘physical theatre’ covers a great of the possibilities offered by these perform- deal of work but in general refers to performances that ances. His commitment to ensemble move - are characterized by physical action and gesture rather ment began a trajectory from protesting than by text. 4. A monograph by Robert Cross and an essay by needless death to an apparent endorsement Fiona Macintosh are the two most notable exceptions to of militarized rule. the general shunning of his work in academic contexts:

245 Robert Cross, Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self- 30. From the production photographs, the Los Performance (Manchester; New York: Manchester Angeles production appears to have brought back the University Press, 2004); Fiona Macintosh, ‘Oedipus in poles. the East End,’ in Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the 31. Dan Sullivan, ‘Agamemnon: the Good, Bad, Dawn of the Third Millennium, ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Bloody’, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1984 Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley (Oxford: Oxford 32. John Elsom, Post-War British Theatre (London; University Press, 2004), p. 340. Boston: Routledge, 1976), p. 149. 5. Steven Berkoff, Free Association: an Autobiography 33. Hammond, p. 54. (London; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 290–1. 34. Bierl, p. 292. 6. Cross, p. 132. 35. Berkoff, Agamemnon,p. 23. 7. Steven Berkoff, Agamemnon; the Fall of the House of 36. Ibid., p. 31. Usher (Charlbury, Oxon: Amber Lane Press, 1990), p. 38. 37. Ibid., p. 33. 8. Berkoff, ‘Three Theatre Manifestos,’ Gambit, No. 38. Coriolanus, III, i, 154–5. 32 (1978), p. 15. Original emphasis. 39. Steven Berkoff and Roger Morton, The Theatre of 9. Berkoff, I Am Hamlet, 1st ed. (New York: Grove Steven Berkoff (London: Methuen Drama, 1992), p. 115. Weidenfeld, 1990), p. 198. Original emphasis. 40. Berkoff, Coriolanus in Deutschland,p. 42. 10. In his autobiography, Berkoff positions the origins 41. Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama: of this element of his work in his training with Claude the History Plays and the Roman Plays (London; New Chagrin and Jacques Lecoq. See Berkoff, Free Association, York: Routledge, 1989), p. 198. See also Anne Barton, p. 53. ‘Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus’, in 11. ‘Blood will have blood/ The high will fall / the Shakespeare and Politics, ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander ghosts of men who died for nothing / will walk by a (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and ruined wall’: Berkoff, Agamemnon, p. 19. John Plotz, ‘Coriolanus and the Failure of Performatives’, 12. Edith Hall, ‘Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra versus her English Literary History, LXIII, No. 4 (1996). Senecan Tradition’, in Agamemnon in Performance: 458 BC 42. Jeremy Kingston, ‘Mugger Mangles Maniac’, The to AD 2004, ed. Fiona Macintosh, Pantelis Michelakis, Times, 19 May 1995. Edith Hall, and Oliver Taplin (Oxford: Oxford Univer- 43. Michael Coveney, ‘Theatre: East End Boys and sity Press, 2005), p. 60. Western Gods’, The Observer, 21 May 1995. 13. David Raeburn, ‘The Dramatic Technique of 44. Louise Doughty, ‘Savaged Noble’, Mail on Sun- Agamemnon’, in Agamemnon, ed. David Stuttard and day, 21 May 1995. Tamsin Shasha (: AOD Publications, 2002), p. 93. 45. Frank Rich, ‘Jagged, Percussive Coriolanus from 14. Ibid. p. 93–5. Steven Berkoff’, New York Times, 23 November 1988. See 15. Jonathan Hammond, ‘London Theatre Group’, also David Wheeler, ed., Coriolanus: Critical Essays (New Plays and Players (1973). York: Garland, 1995), p. 415–34 for other reviews of the 16. Anton Bierl, ‘The Chorus of Aeschylus’ New York production, virtually all of which note the Agamemnon in Modern Stage Productions: Towards the synch ronization of the Roman citizens’ movement. “Performative Turn”,’ in Agamemnon in Performance 458 46. Berkoff, Coriolanus in Deutschland,p. 42. BC to AD 2004, p. 293. 47. William Over, ‘The Public Theatre Coriolanus’, 17. Berkoff, Free Association, p. 96–7. Shakespeare Quarterly, XLI, No. 3 (1990), p. 366. 18. Macintosh, p. 317–18. 48. Garry Wills, ‘Coriolanus without Rome’, in 19. Although marked by its proximity to the events Corio lanus: Critical Essays, p. 427. it describes, Sandy Craig’s history of the ‘alternative’ 49. Stanley Cavell, ‘Coriolanus and Interpretations of British theatre movement during the 1960s and 1970s Politics (Who Does the Wolf Love?)’, in Disowning Know- remains a useful resource for the origins and methods of ledge: in Six Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge these company models. See Sandy Craig, Dreams and University Press, 1987), p. 146–78, cited in Plotz, p. 824. Deconstructions: Alternative Theatre in Britain (Amber - 50. Oliver Arnold, The Third Citizen: Shakespeare’s gate: Amber Lane Press, 1980). Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons (Balti more: 20. A recent collection of essays addresses the resur- Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). gence of the Athenian dramatic form, and its attendant 51. Annabel M. Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular roles for the chorus, during this period. See Edith Hall, Voice (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989), p. 122, cited in Fiona Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley, ed., Dionysus Arnold, p. 192. since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium. 52. Arnold, p. 196. 21. Berkoff, Free Association, p. 108–9. 53. Ibid., p. 204. 22. Steven Grant, ‘Gulp! Interview with Steven 54. For a similar critique of an apparently similarly Berkoff’, in Time Out Interviews, ed. Frank Broughton staged Roman mob, see the discussion of the Canadian (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, 1998), quoted in Cross, Stratford production of 1981 in John Ripley, Coriolanus p. 159. on Stage in England and America, 1609–1994 (Madison, 23. Berkoff, Free Association,p. 374. NJ; London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Asso - 24. Berkoff, Agamemnon, p. i. ciated University Presses, 1998), p. 312–13. 25. Berkoff, Free Association,p. 52, 323–4, Agamemnon, 55. Ibid. p. 313. See also p. 197, where Ripley quotes p. i. reviews of Henry Irving’s 1901 production that indicate 26. Berkoff, Free Association, p. 52–3. a similar emphasis on the conflict between the upright 27. Berkoff, Agamemnon,p. 24. The music was by Coriolanus and the ‘vicious rabble’. Although he never Gordon Phillips. In the Greenwich Theatre production indicates having read about this production, Berkoff of 1976 the music was by Paul Burwell and David Troop. writes often of his identification with Irving as both an 28. Ibid., p. 24. actor-manager and an outsize stage presence. See Berkoff, 29. James F. Gaines, ‘East; Agamemnon (review)’, Free Association, p. 106, 134–5, 176, 207, 209. Educational Theatre Journal, XXIX, No. 1 (1977). 56. Wills, p. 427.

246 57. Over, p. 367. 72. Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre (Cam - 58. Sharon O’Dair, ‘Fobbing Off Disgrace with a bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 180–200. Tale: Stories About Voices in Coriolanus’, in Class, Critics, 73. Ibid., p. 188, 198. The LA Theatre Works produc- and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars (Ann tion was not on tour, but it was produced in the context Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 82. of the international ‘marketplace’ of the festival. 59. Over, p. 366. 74. Sullivan. 60. Rich. 75. Berkoff, Free Association,p. 160. 61. Ian Shuttleworth, ‘Berkoff’s Coriolanus’, Financial 76. Kenneth Rea, ‘Naturalism, Like Smoking, Is Bad Times (London), 26 May 1995. for Your Health’, The Times, 1 March 1991; Paul Taylor, 62. While this may be fairly related to the subject of ‘An Open and Shut Case: Paul Taylor Meets Director his plays – East and Decadence would lose the very cul - Steven Berkoff and Actor Antony Sher in Rehearsal for tural specificity that forms the target of their attacks – ’s The Trial’, The Independent (London), his Kafka and Poe adaptations did not require all-white 2 March 1991; John Walsh, ‘Anti-Hero with an East Side casts. For the racial composition of Agamemnon, see below. Story’, Sunday Times, 10 February 1991; and Cross, 63. The cast of the Munich production was all white, p. 96–102. but Berkoff was working from a company of actors pre- 77. Berkoff, Coriolanus in Deutschland, p. 42, 106; Free sented to him by the theatre. Association,p. 52 –3, 97; I Am Hamlet,p. 118. 64. Berkoff and Morton, The Theatre of Steven Berkoff, 78. Cross, Chapters 3, 4, and passim. It is unfortunate p. 77. His direction of On the Waterfront (2008) also used that this sole book-length treatment of Berkoff appears a polyracial cast, the fourth occasion in his entire career. dedicated to the simultaneously banal and over devel - 65. Ibid., p. 115. oped thesis that Berkoff’s longing to gain mainstream 66. His Israeli Agamemnon and Japanese Metamor - acceptance results in his performing himself as a phosis, like his Munich Coriolanus, were cast with local Thatcherite autocrat. For all the superb history Cross (monoracial actors) provided to him by the producing offers, his determination to prove Berkoff a closet Tory company. frustrated by his inability to convince broad audiences 67. Robert Fitzpatrick, ‘The Olympic Arts Festival’, of his individual merits requires omitting analysis of a Olympic Review, No. 198 (1984), p. 248; ‘Official Report of large part of Berkoff’s work, including his work with the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1984’ Shakespeare texts, in addition to ignoring his decades- (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Olympic Organizing long collaborations with numerous actors and designers. Committee, 1985), p. 543. It also leads to such questionable conclusions as the 68. Fitzpatrick, p. 248. astonishing claim that Berkoff’s white-face, obscenity- 69. Ibid., p. 248. spewing, brawling, unabashedly patricidal and incestu- 70. Berkoff, Free Association,p. 152. ous Oedipus, the Eddy of Greek, is ‘a classic yuppie’ 71. Berkoff and Morton, The Theatre of Steven Berkoff, (p. 171). p. 77. 79. Berkoff, Agamemnon, p. 33.

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