Shakespeare

Shakespeare is a monodrama project by Steven Berkoff, English actor, screenwriter, playwright, director and one of the pioneers of “In-yer-face theatre”. The monoproject is a mixture of lecture, comedy and masterful interpretations of the famous monologues of Shakespeare’s villains. It premiered to great acclaim at the Royal Haymarket Theatre in London in 1998 and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award.

Berkoff first discusses Shakespeare’s genius and the challenging work that awaits an actor tackling his works. On an empty stage and without costumes, he uses humour and satire to tackle the negative characters in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Iago, Richard III, Macbeth, Shylock ...

He makes a brief introduction of each of the negative characters and discusses the motives for their actions in various representations that he has experienced. All villains have a thing in common – they have not received “the milk of human kindness” and they take revenge with their evil deeds. They find a substitute for love in gaining power and enjoy instilling fear in other people. Berkoff does not forget to mention that the villains tend to flourish when society is in economic and political crisis. He explains why men are much more likely to succumb to revenge than women. In a humorous way, he whips theatre reviewers, talks about the hardship of acting and versatility of experienced actors, the difference between creating a film and a theatre production, adds an anecdote here and there and in between gets bloody real with individual negative characters …