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Steven Berkoff

Author profile

born

August 03, 1937 in Stepney, London, The United Kingdom

gender

male

website

http://www.stevenberkoff.com/

genre

Drama

influences

Franz Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Sophocles

About this author

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Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director.Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, and Adolf Hitler in epic mini-series War and Remembrance.

His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Ma...more Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director.Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, and Adolf Hitler in epic mini-series War and Remembrance.

His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Massage (1997); Sturm und Drang; and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia (2001). East, Greek and West were punk-inspired works about working class London youth based on Oedipus and Beowulf respectively.

Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "in yer face": "the language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation."

According to Annette Pankratz, in her 2005 Modern Drama review of Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance, by Robert Cross, "Steven Berkoff is one of the major minor contemporary dramatists in Britain and – due to his self-fashioning as a bad boy of British theatre and the ensuing attention of the media – a phenomenon in his own right."

"I'm scared of Steven Berkoff" is a line in the lyrics of "I'm Scared" (1992), by Queen's guitarist Brian May, released on his first solo album Back to the Light (1993). Brian May has declared himself as a great admirer of Berkoff.

The Berkoff Performing Arts Centre was named for him at Alton College, in North East Hampshire on 20 June 2008.(less)

combine editions
Books by Steven Berkoff

Average rating: 3.95 · 111 ratings · 6 reviews · 49 distinct works

	Plays One 4.31 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2000	My rating:
	Agamemnon; The Fall of the House of Usher 3.67 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1990	My rating:
	The Collected Plays 4.20 avg rating — 10 ratings	My rating:
	The Trial, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony: Three theatre adaptations from Franz Kafka 3.67 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1988	My rating:
	The Trial; And, Metamorphosis: Two Theatre Adaptations From Franz Kafka 4.67 avg rating — 6 ratings	My rating:
	Steven Berkoff: Plays 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2000	My rating:
	Meditations On Metamorphosis 4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings	My rating:
	Theatre of Steven Berkoff 4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1992	My rating:
	East and Other Plays (Playscript ; 78) 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1984	My rating:
	Graft: Tales of an Actor 3.50 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1999	My rating: