A Review of Playtexts Published in Britain, 1994

Abstract

Faber gave revealing service to Steven Berkoff by issuing simultaneously two volumes, Collected Plays Volume One (East; West; Greek; Sink the Belgrano; Massage and Lunch) and Volume Two (Decadence; Kvetch; Acapulco; Harry's Christmas; Brighton Beach Scumbags; Dahling You Were Marvellous; Dog/Pitbull; Actor), priced at £9.99 each. This supplanted the earlier Faber Berkoff collection, Decadence and Other Plays (including East and West), which I lament, in that it united some of his best writing in a single volume priced at less than ten pounds, such as I felt assured in requiring my students to buy for a single week's detailed work. These volumes contain more variable material at a higher price; Volume One is the stronger, but if I set it, I expect justifiable economic complaint. With the British student grant being eroded systematically in terms of real economic worth, this provides occasion for my suspicion that if playtexts cost less, students would buy more of them, creating in turn a more theatrically and socially informed, literate and inquisitive public readership of playtexts, rather than a readership confined to economically safe, carefully predetermined limitations. Speaking of predetermined limitations, some of these presented themselves to me strikingly in a survey of Berkoff's work which seemed exhaustive to the point of repetition. The central image of Dog/Pitbull—a sketch of a ‘repulsively attractive’ man and his pet, ‘amplification of his own insane and undirected energy’—seemed the kernel of both volumes’ content.