Steven Berkoff

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway This Week is an actor, writer and a director. Born to a Jewish family in London's East End, he drifted through a succession of unfulfilling jobs until someone suggested he went to drama school. Drama, he says, changed my life. But although he proved a successful actor, touring in Rep and working for a spell in Hollywood, he never fully achieved what he wanted. That only came when he started to write, to perform and to direct his own plays. Energetic and compelling, his work has brought him an international reputation, and his last West End production, Kfetch, was voted Comedy of the Year. He is Stephen Berkhoff.

Presenter1:10

That's the case, isn't it, Stephen, that you found true happiness, as it were, as an actor manager, a role in which you were beholden to nobody but yourself.

Steven Berkoff1:19

Well, it's true because it was a time when you could really determine your own fate. For many years, I felt that I was a a victim of fate. You know, you waited a slave to the telephone and to the agent who would call you with the magic news that you've got kind of three weeks in Cardiff or a summer season in Buxton. And I had a most marvellous time in Rep. I found it was one of the most stimulating and constructive and educative times of my life. But after a while, parts came.

Steven Berkoff1:55

became fewer and fewer, and uh the phone would r ring with less frequency, and I perhaps became also more demanding for a b different and better kind of work. And so the only thing one can do really is to become master of your own destiny to a certain extent.

Presenter2:11

But then every production you do, therefore, was your baby. You had usually written it, or quite often you'd written it, you'd certainly conceived how it should be put on the stage, you directed it and you acted in it. It therefore presumably makes you quite difficult to work with, because everything's in your head, and you've got to transmit that to the other actors, and you get, you know, quite tetchy with them sometimes, don't you?

Steven Berkoff2:33

Not really, no. I mean, I actually I I enjoy working with actors and I I'm really not really touchy at all.

Presenter2:37

Some of them say you're quite difficult.

Steven Berkoff2:39

I think if the actor is inexperienced, or if he has been perhaps trained in the wrong way, or if he's been conditioned in a certain school of theatre which is not necessarily sympathetic to my techniques, he may find difficulties. And they may be actors who have worked in big institutions and I've spent a lot of their time sitting in dressing rooms and doing the times crosswords, playing Scrabble and other associated activities.

Presenter3:04

So it's all in the cause of art, and underneath this aggressive exterior there beats a heart of gold.

Steven Berkoff3:09

Absolutely, that's quite

Presenter3:10

What what sort of music appeals to this heart?

Steven Berkoff3:13

Well, all sorts. I mean, I was never really educated into a particular type of grounding in music, classical music or otherwise. I kind of found my way. I explored and heard things and used to go into HMV in Oxford Street, where you could sit in a booth during your lunch time and you're working there and just ask for any record and just sit in this booth and hear everything. And it was really quite marvellous. So I've had a very eclectic and esoteric taste, and everything fascinated me.

Presenter3:34

And everything.

Presenter3:41

When you arrive on the desert island, what's the first one you'll put on?

Steven Berkoff3:44

Well, to acclimatize myself to the environment of of the island and to play something that might be germane to the spirit of the island, that might even evoke a response from the inhabitants, I would choose some Balinese music which I heard when I was in Bali. And I just call it Balinese monkey music. And this is really about the monkeys in the forest protecting the princess who is about to be carried off by the demon. And the monkey chat or chant that comes in is a warning to her that there is something evil within.

Presenter4:51

Part of the forest scene from Ketchak a Balinese music drama performed by Ketchak Gandhi Sari.

Presenter4:58

You have, Stephen, a very confrontational attitude towards your audience, don't you? You you seem to want to provoke them, you want to assault them. I mean, you attack them.

Steven Berkoff5:07

My desire with an audience is to ench enchant them by using all the elements that are within me to do this, and that is a combination of using language, movement, ideas. I don't often think, well, I want to shock an audience. I want to write down and confess the most naked thoughts that I can. And so when I started writing East, I thought I'd write down the worst things I could possibly think of that could come out of a teenage mind. And that would be as an exercise for fun.

Steven Berkoff5:40

Oh, the most marvellous experience I ever had Or oh the the worst experience I ever had the most most amazing the most thrilling the most So each character. My idea of giving myself a goal in writing was to try and find an extreme experience for each person and set that down without reservation.

Presenter5:59

But that approach has therefore meant that you've been in the past really quite dismissive of people who write perhaps much more finely about much finer things, things that move not in such extremities, like Chekhov, for example, where maybe a whole play is simply about

Steven Berkoff6:13

Well

Speaker 36:13

Make

Presenter6:15

Whether somebody's going to get to Moscow or not. You've been very dismissive about the likes of Chekhov, haven't you?

Steven Berkoff6:20

It's possibly that he he's used too much to make up for really a lack of exploration in one's own environment and one's own life. That they say, Ah, Shekhov, let's do Shekhov because he seems to encapsulate certain emotions and feelings that are

Steven Berkoff6:37

Shared by the worthy middle classes, such as anguish, longing, ennui, sadness, nostalgia, and all those rather superficial emotions that don't go really any deeper. And they're almost stultified people. And I feel that many people who enjoy I mean Chekhov is quite an effective writer, but I think basically there is a stultification there and something which is almost a little constipated. And I think that's why he appeals so much to the Brits. They love it.

Presenter7:10

Let's have your second record.

Steven Berkoff7:12

Well, when I was young I uh was fascinated by as I was listening to classical music in the East End of London and uh there there was this little uh record which came out called Spark His Magic Piano, which appealed to me because I had an ambition to be a pianist and so consequently when I heard this record about a boy who could magic a piano into being uh you know an instrument that played all this incredible music, uh naturally it was a number one hit for me.

Speaker 37:38

All right, Sparky.

Speaker 37:41

I'll play anything you ask me to play.

Speaker 37:47

For now

Speaker 37:56

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. This is fun.

Speaker 38:04

Parking goes at play.

Presenter8:05

Yeah.

Speaker 38:06

Is Spear still here? No, not.

Presenter8:09

Uh

Speaker 38:09

Yeah. The spirit

Presenter8:09

Henry Blair and Ray Turner with Sparky's magic piano. So let's hear about your childhood, Stephen Berkhoff. The East End, Jewish family. What are your earliest memories of home and its atmosphere?

Steven Berkoff8:22

Well, the family at that time was splitting up because we were kind of going shunting around, you know, the place with, you know, the war and the post-war and finding new places to live. But a large part of the family were living in the East End, of course, and so there was like a rather large extended family of uncles and aunts and cousins and relatives who lived in the area. So there was a kind of great deal of warmth in that particular environment. And I remember there were always crowds in the street and street markets and Watney street markets and mother knowing everybody and greetings always being exchanged every few yards and and popping into neighbours' houses and I remember evenings of card playing going on, where hour after hour these cards money were going backwards and forwards and it used to cause me a great consternation to see my mother's handbag keeping opening and tedbold notes coming out. That worried me a lot. And with your

Presenter9:10

And with your with your father being a tailor, did that mean that you were always quite smartly turned out as a landmark?

Steven Berkoff9:14

No not no, not really. No, I don't think he had any particular uh desire to kind of make a suit for me. I think it was something that he did and I don't think he liked it after after a while. But it was the only thing he could do to make a living.

Presenter9:24

But clothes are important to you, aren't they, and always have been?

Steven Berkoff9:27

became more important, I think. I always uh had a flair for style. Even even when I was like nine I sort of saw a full art tie in a shop window and it became my obsession for for many, many months until I I got the money to buy it.

Presenter9:40

And you were called a spiv. I mean, you were called spiv, that was your

Steven Berkoff9:43

But you see after just after the war, the family had immigrated to America before the war and the war uh cut us off uh effectively. So they had to wait till after the war to to join them. And since my mother was the youngest, she was the the you know, the last one to go to to America.

Presenter9:58

So she took you as a

Presenter10:02

What did you think of that?

Steven Berkoff10:03

Oh, I thought it was the most extraordinary place on on earth. To me it was like a kind of great dream. It was a kind of vast Gothic and phantasmagoria. I I could see and imagine nothing like it. It fulfilled every single fantasy as a child. I mean, it was a fantasy brought to life. It was it was just uh remarkable.

Presenter10:21

So how long were you out there?

Steven Berkoff10:21

Well, we were only there for about some, say, four months.

Presenter10:24

Hmm.

Steven Berkoff10:24

Uh because we had to come back for various reasons and uh my father couldn't find a job and it was very difficult and f f he may have been nostalgic for London. But I went to school there. I went to school in the Bronx and and I carried that memory with me. And always I came back with a suit with long pants. That was the first time I was eleven years old wearing long pants. Of course nobody wore long pants at eleven not in those days.

Presenter10:43

Yeah.

Presenter10:45

What colour was it that suited him?

Steven Berkoff10:46

It was a double-breasted Czech suit, and I wore it with a tie. So I went to school in Christian Street School in the East End.

Steven Berkoff10:53

Everybody every kid's face and mouth dropped open like they had never seen anything like this in their entire lives. They were too gobsmacked to even insult me.

Presenter11:07

Next record.

Steven Berkoff11:08

Several of us used to go dancing and we wore very sharp suits of course made by Diamond Brothers and listened to very cool music like Stan Kenton and Brubeck and we became real mad about Kenton. Now for me Kenton crossed the barrier between jazz and classic and he was very very inventive, extraordinarily inventive musician and Brubeck was another one and I heard him play when he had the octet. The octet was experimenting with Bach and I heard fugue and bop themes which was his version of Bach and I was absolutely thrilled to hear this music which was the combination which I was looking for between jazz and classic.

Speaker 312:27

Yeah.

Presenter12:49

The Dave Brubeck octet playing fugue on Bob themes. You were a a teddy boy for much of your youth, and I I suppose as a consequence you're now portrayed as an arty yob.

Presenter13:00

You know, the street wise lad who might have turned to violence but was saved, I suppose, is the implication by turning to art instead. Does that stick in your craw?

Steven Berkoff13:09

You see, what I did, I lived in that environment.

Steven Berkoff13:12

And I was just another chap of that environment, really. And what I did I observed the environment and I used the material from that environment for material for my plays, because those things were archetypal themes. They're about conflict, courage, resourcefulness, about the ability to kind of take your own, you know, your guts in your hand and to risk your life for what you believed in. So they weren't bourgeois themes. These were themes about these young kids who lived in this environment.

Presenter13:35

But you didn't write about that until about twenty years later. Why did it take so long to come to the surface?

Steven Berkoff13:38

That's right.

Steven Berkoff13:40

Because I wasn't a writer then. So when I first when I started to write, I would excavate the past and like an archaeologist dig up those old shards of experience and the first thing I thought I'd write about is my own experience. And so when I started writing in my late thirties, and East was the first play I actually wrote, instead of researching and writing a play about some theme, be it Galileo or the church or the police, some theme, I'd sit down and read hundreds and hundreds of books, I would make the theme me, because that would be the most interesting. Because if you really write sincerely and obsessively about yourself, it's the most interesting thing, because we're all professors of our own beings.

Presenter14:19

Another record, where are we, number four.

Steven Berkoff14:22

Well, Bach's cello suite, played by Paul Tortelio. Well, I've always loved Bach. I mean, uh, to me the rhythms and uh syncopations of Bach and the fugues are fascinating. I I I like the simplicity, the the classic kind of neatness of it. It always seems perfect for whatever situation you're in.

Presenter15:42

Part of the prelude of Bach's suite number one for cello in G major played by Paul Tortellier.

Presenter15:47

Tell me a bit about uh the series of unfulfilling jobs, as I called them at the beginning, that occupied your twenties. What did you do? What did you sell? What did you deliver?

Steven Berkoff15:56

Well, when I left school I left school at fifteen but I was uh terribly um

Steven Berkoff16:01

impatient and uh desirous to get out into the world and earn some real money.

Steven Berkoff16:05

And so I rushed to a job, taking absolutely anything where I could have a wage packet.

Steven Berkoff16:11

It didn't seem to matter what I did. It was of no relevance. My father gave me no guidance in in the in the matter, nor nor did he want me to go to university or any further education. So I think I went to an engineering firm in Baker Street.

Steven Berkoff16:23

And that was the very first job. I think he got two pounds ten a week. I couldn't stand that.

Steven Berkoff16:28

And uh after that I just did a a series of jobs, went going from job to job, I think.

Presenter16:32

But you sold some pretty classy stuff, didn't you? Fine china, cashmere, switches, handmade shirts.

Steven Berkoff16:36

Oh, yes. I did, yes, I did. I mean, I went briefly. I was looking for another job, and I thought I'd work in a shop for a while. And I worked for W. Bill of South Moulton Street, selling cashmere sweaters. And to me, that was really fascinating. I was very, very high class. And of course, my teddy boy suit, they didn't know it was a teddy boy suit with a velvet collar. They thought this is a very elegant type of rather old-fashioned suit. And they said, oh, isn't that nice? Isn't that for guardsmen wear? And I said, yes, it is, really. And.

Steven Berkoff17:03

And so I I w worked in WBU and that was one of the happiest periods of my life.

Presenter17:06

I think was it?

Steven Berkoff17:07

Yes, oh yes very, very happy, and I would love to serve Malden Street.

Presenter17:10

What's serving all those people whom you've you despise so much upper classes?

Steven Berkoff17:10

What's up?

Steven Berkoff17:14

Oh no, I didn't describe it. No, no, these weren't really upper classes. These were almost de classes. They were beyond class. They were the millionaires. They were like sumptuous creatures. They were movie stars. Ava Gardner used to come in there and shop and buy her sweaters. So at that time I was 15. It was a really fascinating experience.

Presenter17:30

But it's very interesting that you you purport to despise pretension and phoniness of all kinds, and yet all the things you said about yourself on your way up was you seeking to affect all sorts of things, and whether it was Sunet the Beautiful Suit or whatever, it is was you actually being a phony?

Steven Berkoff17:47

Oh, um, totally. Um, I was totally a phony because all my values were geared towards self-improvement, making money, trying to find what I could, the shortest cut, the quickest way to get something to achieve without necessarily the the application of scholarship or really study. Yes, when I was sixteen and seventeen. If you can say it was phony, you could also say that I lacked uh values, that I lacked kind of moral and ethical judgments because I didn't have this, didn't have any learning. I didn't have a a father who imparted those things to me. So it was very much like uh the the the law of the jungle for me at that age.

Presenter18:25

So what happened to Changy?

Steven Berkoff18:27

Well, as I started reading more, and I started to educate myself, and started to gain a knowledge of other things,

Steven Berkoff18:34

And a knowledge and a feeling for other other people and other lives, apart from the pursuit of making money for its own sake, which after a while I found quite contemptible. And I found that the richness is really in inside one's self and one's creativity, which is worth far more than all the money in the world. And at that time I got sick of all these jobs, and somebody advised me to go to the study drama and go to the City Literary Institute, which was a working man's institute. I didn't go to a full-time drama school at that time or university, but they said you should really study and really go and work with a group of people. And I found it very stimulating and a way of expressing myself, which I wanted to do.

Presenter19:22

Record number five.

Steven Berkoff19:25

Um

Steven Berkoff19:26

Yeah, I started um being interested in opera. It was something that I never really had a particular feeling for. Um but I s I loved Benjamin Britton's Midsummer Night's Dream because at least I knew the play and very often I would like an opera because I knew the play, I knew the story, so I knew the knew the the work very well. And I remember going to see this Covent Garden

Steven Berkoff19:49

um maybe even in my early twenties and uh hearing

Steven Berkoff19:53

Oh, but on being sung by the counter tenor, and seeing I know a bank where the wild thyme grows, Where ox slips and the nodding violet blows.

Steven Berkoff20:03

Or where the wild time blows or where it blows, who cares. Anyway, um this is sung by an accounted tenor voice and at that time I had never heard a counter tenor and I didn't know that a human being, male voice, could sing like this, but I found it one of the most enchanting experiences I had uh so far of the receipts and opera.

Speaker 320:36

Well,

Speaker 320:45

Oh there

Speaker 320:55

Out of the cattle pin with a long

Speaker 321:07

With sway to pass for us.

Presenter21:25

Part of the aria I Know a Bank from Act One of Benjamin Britton's Amidsummer Night's Dream, sung by Alfred Della as Oberon, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britton. Well, now this is the real test now, Stephen Berkhoff, because this is where we talk about the art of mime on radio. I want to try because it seems to me that it's a very important part of your skill. Now, you would rather, I think, mime the death of a character by sword, wouldn't you, than say.

Presenter21:52

Choreographed the movement using a sword from props.

Steven Berkoff21:55

Yes, I think I would.

Steven Berkoff21:58

When I started working, um

Steven Berkoff22:01

I was fascinated by all aspects of theatre because my the mandate I gave to myself was to create theatre as it's never been seen before. And with some, I think, an expression I took from a book on the Bauhaus, where their idea and their ideology was to create an art form and using nothing from the past. So you would have no kind of historical precedent in order to build your blocks on. So you didn't assume when you made a theatre that you'd have a set and you have a stage cloth and you have a door and you'd have this and you have that. And you would say you have a certain amount of information there and this is your text. How will you express this text visually? And you have to think of something which has never been thought of before. So when I first did a production,

Steven Berkoff22:46

Involving mine did Kafka's The Trial, the actors became the set in which the character lived. They became his very room, the environment of the room. They became the chest of drawers which were searched and rifled by the guards. They could become a staircase just using their bodies, and which Joseph Kay, the character, could climb.

Presenter23:09

So the secret police would come and rifle through the drawers of this man on trial, but they were in fact people.

Steven Berkoff23:12

Yeah.

Steven Berkoff23:16

There were peoples.

Presenter23:17

So you've got the double meaning also of the invasion of privacy.

Steven Berkoff23:20

Precisely, because everything that person has, their furniture, are extensions of themselves. And this is a st technique of mine which is called mind figuration, whereby the performer becomes the object. And it's a technique that was evolved in Paris by a school and by a man called Jacques Lecoq. And I studied with him for a period of time in the mid-sixties, and also then with his great pupil, Claude Chagrin, and studied with her for a year. And after that, I continued and pursued this study because I found it was like a metaphysical kind of theatre. It was like a magic theatre.

Presenter23:57

Next piece of music.

Steven Berkoff23:59

Um about five years ago I I saw an extraordinary film called Koyani Skwatzi. The music in this by Philip Glass is one of Glass's most inventive and most moving uh compositions, and uh as such I am never cease to be really moved when I hear it.

Steven Berkoff24:20

I'm reminded of this extraordinary images in this film, which was a film dedicated to show life out of balance, and it was a film which.

Steven Berkoff24:31

gave us images of the the mechanical world and the destruction of the world and machinery, greed, uh the violation of life. And uh it's a very, very, very disturbing. One of the greatest films I've ever seen. And this is a piece of music from the end of this film.

Speaker 324:57

Garnie Scottie.

Presenter25:19

Part of Philip Glass's soundtrack from the film Koyaniskatsi.

Presenter25:23

You're Stephen Berkhoff a very um familiar villain, if I may call you that. You played a villain in Octopussy in your foray to Hollywood, and in Rambo, and I think you played Hitler on the television, and Moseley you've played. Do you like playing villain?

Steven Berkoff25:37

Well, I I um

Steven Berkoff25:39

I tell you the truth, I don't much like them. I find they're stereotypical, they're kind of two-dimensional. You know, they mustn't have too much expression. You've got to be very cool, very satanic. And for the first couple of times you play them, you think, Oh, well, this is great fun. You always have great suits and you look sharp, and everybody fears you, and you have a desk, and you press a button, and the hoods come in, and you say, What are you doing here? and you lower your voice and register. And you think it's great fun, and it is. And if it's a great villain, like playing Hitler was a great villain to play.

Steven Berkoff26:13

But eventually it they're a little bit cardboard cut out. They create a little charge, a little bit of electric.

Presenter26:20

But if you play them in Hollywood, they earn you a lot of money.

Steven Berkoff26:22

They can earn a certain to a certain extent, although I never really earned very much from them was my I started in Hollywood and therefore immediately with the villains, and I hadn't built up any career in film, so my fee wasn't that extraordinary.

Presenter26:33

I mentioned money. What do you spend your money on when you've got it? I mean, how do you live? Is money important to you?

Steven Berkoff26:39

I don't really spend my money on much. I I I really li very modest life.

Presenter26:44

Do you have any energy left to put into your personal life? It seems to me you put so much energy and enthusiasm into your work. I mean, when you get home, are you just a kind of.

Steven Berkoff26:53

Yes, I don't really have much energy or much desire for anything else, and I don't.

Presenter26:54

Change design

Steven Berkoff26:58

indulge in things and I don't really spend money on paintings and I don't buy expensive furniture and I don't buy toys and the only thing I do is sometimes I spend it would I be on traveling and that's what I'd love to do to go to foreign countries.

Presenter27:08

What about people in your private life? I mean, do you need people outside the theatre?

Steven Berkoff27:12

Oh yes, I mean, I need people very much, because when you're putting out on the stage every night, say there's five hundred people there, and they're all laughing, and if you have a good night and you're in good form, they're laughing and screaming and cheering, and at the end, wow, you're great

Speaker 327:25

The end

Steven Berkoff27:27

Then you go to your dressing room. You can feel very, very empty if nobody is there that particular night and nobody comes back. And unless you you know, so you need friends because you've put out so much.

Presenter27:41

Record number seven.

Steven Berkoff27:43

Uh this um is from

Steven Berkoff27:47

Richard Strauss's Salome is sung by Eberhard Wachter as John the Baptist. And I I mean, I A I like this music. I think it's so so powerful and disturbing and strident and passionate music that Strauss has written for of Salome, and also because again, like

Steven Berkoff28:06

Uh the Oprah on Midsummer Night's Dream I staged Salome, thinking it's one of Wilde's most uh gloriously uh beautiful works, a kind of a work of verbal fireworks and great colourful displays of language. And and so consequently I I found myself drawn to the opera to see how the opera dealt with this language, and uh I found it dealt with it very, very well.

Speaker 328:31

Oh, he's very

Speaker 328:34

Asseting manufacture.

Speaker 328:43

Die last month.

Speaker 328:48

Hunger teaches Panett's born passive pass.

Speaker 329:07

All for us where each weather face

Presenter29:31

Part of the Aria Vo Ister desen Zundenbecher Jettst Foll ist, from did you like that? From Richard Strauss's Salome, sung by Eberhard Wachter as John the Baptist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Speaker 429:35

Uh

Steven Berkoff29:35

Yeah.

Speaker 329:36

Since you left.

Speaker 429:36

Yeah.

Presenter29:45

So what happens next to Stephen Berkhoff? You're fifty four, you're a success, you're in demand at home and abroad. I mean, what more is there to do?

Steven Berkoff29:54

Were you now

Steven Berkoff29:55

One always feels one's just beginning, you know, just scratching the surface of things. And I see the years kind of leaping ahead of me, almost like dragging me there like wild horses. And I'm really holding back. I think, come on, I don't feel like that, don't look like that. I certainly don't act like that. And yet they're racing ahead.

Steven Berkoff30:15

I don't know really. I e I take each year as it comes and I take each job as it, you know, surfaces in my mind. Uh so I don't have a kind of uh overview. I'm really a character or a creature of obsession. So when I have an obsession about a work or something, I'll do it.

Presenter30:31

But as you come in to the mainstream, as it were, I mean you're in the West End, you're winning traditional awards and that sort of thing, aren't you becoming part of the establishment that you've spent so many years actually challenging?

Steven Berkoff30:42

The establishment is believed perhaps come to me. I am the establishment. I think establishment is where the audience come to see you, and no matter what you're doing, that's the establishment.

Presenter30:51

People would say that's very arrogant.

Steven Berkoff30:53

Well, I think a certain amount of arrogance isn't too too unhealthy.

Presenter30:57

Last record.

Steven Berkoff30:59

The last one.

Steven Berkoff31:00

I have chosen

Steven Berkoff31:01

Our late Er Sir Lawrence Olivier reading part of the Song of Deborah from the Old Testament.

Steven Berkoff31:07

Um

Steven Berkoff31:09

Of course, for many actors of my generation, Olivier was the ultimate, the hallmark.

Steven Berkoff31:16

Ah, thee.

Steven Berkoff31:17

Supreme

Steven Berkoff31:19

uh exponent of the most daring uh tradition of theatre, where the actor was a kind of a great warrior. And for me, and as I say for many others, uh no one epitomized so much the idea of of the of the uh the actor

Steven Berkoff31:39

carrying the tradition from Edmund Keane, who we read we can only read about and be enthralled by his uh exploits.

Steven Berkoff31:48

I'm an actor that is so galvanic and so mesmerizing that he can have an audience spellbound and transfixed. I've only seen this.

Steven Berkoff31:58

Maybe once or twice in my life, and once only really seeing Sir Lawrence at Chichester on the first night of Chichester, playing Othello, where the whole audience were stunned into an abject, absolute silence at the end of the first act and could not clap, and stumbled out, almost unable to speak to their partners, as if the very act of speaking would you like a drink? It's the interval, shall we have a cigarette was almost too trivial. Well, these are a series of readings he did from the Old Testament, which were published Renice Records were

Steven Berkoff32:38

um put out about twenty years ago, and then they seem to fade f from the uh uh s the shops and from the uh the public eye.

Steven Berkoff32:48

or ear but I remember him reading the song of Deborah and capturing some of that quality he had in Othello that night a most daring reading, and it never failed to inspire me.

Speaker 333:02

Blessed above women shall jail the wife of Heba the Kenite be. Blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked for water and she gave him milk. She brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail and her right hand to the workman's hammer. And with the hammer she smote Cicera. She smote off his head. When she had pierced and stricken through his temples, at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down. At her feet he bowed, he fell. Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

Presenter33:47

Sir Laurence Olivier, as he then was, reading part of the Song of Deborah from the Old Testament.

Presenter33:53

Now, if you could only take one of those eight records with you, which one would it be?

Steven Berkoff33:58

Well, I hadn't actually um thought of that.

Presenter34:01

I thought I'd caught you on away.

Steven Berkoff34:02

Yes, you did. If I could take one, it would probably be Philip Glass's soundtrack from Coilisquatzi. There's something about the sound and the poignancy, and also it would remind me of the film. So as I'm listening to the music, I can create my own images, but also also I can also recover the images of the film.

Presenter34:21

And a book you got the Bible and Shakespeare waiting for you?

Steven Berkoff34:25

Well, I thought I must take a manual of some gardening book, because obviously on an island I'd need to kind of grow vegetables and uh and start to irrigate the earth and maybe uh plant a few flowers and learn about seeds and bulbs and all those things. And that's something I could never be bored of reading because you have to keep reading it every day because you're always kind of uh servicing and you know the earth and digging your your fields and you're you know planting your seeds. So I would have to take a book on uh Aunt Garden.

Presenter34:51

Gardening night, and a luxury.

Steven Berkoff34:53

I would take a piano, because I I did study the piano just a little when I was very young, and it would give me a chance really to know spend all the rest of my life there just learning a couple of tunes, and that would keep me well occupied and fulfil myself and create a few pleasant sounds without disturbing anyone.

Presenter35:09

Simple upright piano on which you will only play. Right, that's a deal. Stephen Berkoff, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Steven Berkoff35:17

Thank you very much for having me here, sir.

Speaker 435:26

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.