Steven Berkoff admits to Lloyd Evans that, despite his reputation, he’s not tough at all
On the waterfront. This, literally, is where I meet Steven Berkoff to discuss his stage adaptation of the classic Fifties movie. Berkoff’s east London office is a sumptuous, spotlessly clean apartment with wraparound views of the grey-green Thames. He strolls in, direct from rehearsals, wearing dark loose baggy clothes. I’d expected a brash, superconfident whirlwind but Berkoff is softly spoken, pensive, hesitantly friendly. He even asks if I mind him smoking a roll-up. ‘Of course not.’ But he doesn’t have one. Instead we sip coffee at a vast polished black table.
There’s something melancholy in the lined complexities of his face, and his pale, brilliant blue eyes haven’t quite the unnerving intensity they once had. I ask why he chose this project. ‘Often plays come into your orbit for unspecific reasons. Maybe they’re fated.’ He spotted the script at the National Theatre by chance. Budd Schulberg had turned his original screenplay into a novel which he then adapted for the stage. ‘It was tried out in New York about 15 years ago. And it sank. When I read the script I realised why. Too much extra luggage.’ Schulberg, now 94, invited Berkoff to direct a new adaptation. ‘I leapt at it. I only need a little encouragement.’
After successful try-outs in Edinburgh and Nottingham the show arrived last week in London at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Berkoff himself plays the mobster Johnny Friendly. ‘Is it a while since you were in the West End?’ ‘A lonnnng time,’ he intones in a funereal voice. In the 1970s he remembers bringing a new play into London virtually every year. These days he has to rely on the artistic directors of the National Theatre and the RSC. ‘It might be a nice chap who says, “Oh, Steve, come in. What have you got?” Or there might be someone who’s not so nice who says, “Oh no, no, no, no, you’re not for us.” They have their nice friends, you see. It’s a bit cliquey.’ To him the West End ‘has never seemed so utterly insular’. He particularly regrets the passing of international theatre, ‘the foreign’ as he calls it. ‘In the Sixties we had people who loved the foreign. George Devine at the Royal Court. Olivier loved the foreign when he was running the early national theatre. He brought in Brecht and Bergman and others. Donald Albery ran the world theatre season. Nowadays people don’t love the foreign too much. They don’t embrace it.’ And the vogue for talent-show stars? ‘A big error and a big mistake. A lack of responsibility on the part of the major theatres.’
As a critic I can’t resist asking him about his notorious hostility to reviewers. ‘You’ve got to be grown up,’ he says, ‘take the bad with the good. You can’t be too uppity. And neither should you become like a narcissistic wimp that attacks critics.’ But didn’t he once threaten to kill Nicholas de Jongh of the Evening Standard? ‘A rite of passage for all aspiring writers,’ he laughs. ‘Either beat up a critic or threaten them. You haven’t arrived until you’ve done that.’ He adds that the incident lacked any real menace. ‘In a little jokey way I said to him, “One day I’m going to kill you, ha ha ha.”’
Since we’re on the topic of fake intimidation I ask how he became one of Hollywood’s favourite baddies. This sets him off. His tone grows expansive and actorly, and his speech acquires a sort of musical pulse, the phrases coupled together with a rolling insistent energy. ‘Well, I wrote a play called East which was in verse so it’s kind of by Shakespeare but with a Cockney or East End message. And I played in it, and the cast were like street kids, and we had to be a little bit tough because I’m basically not tough, I’m a spineless wimp, but I had to play it. And, because of that, being a spineless wimp, I had to act it, I had to take an attitude. And as I started to act it, it felt rather good, and I strutted and posed and copied all the heavy lads. And I did it on stage, too. So one day I’m auditioning for a film and they’re looking for a villain and they said, “You’ve just done a play. Give us some of the dialogue.” So I did, and I got the part, as the villain. And then you’re stamped, it’s like a hallmark, they go “Boing! You are the villain.” So you play villains and you play more and more villains and they become more and more villainous. And then suddenly you enjoy the villains. And then you relish it. And what the villain is is the ability to release torrents of energy. And that’s a wonderful pleasure for actors, all actors love to do that.’
I shift from the theatre to politics. Last summer in The Spectator (‘Starstruck by David Cameron’, 5 July), Berkoff wrote an extraordinary paean to Cameron and his hour-long conference speech of 2007. Berkoff’s enthusiasm is undiminished. ‘I was moved by his sensitivity to the world, his emphasis on the values of our society which were going into decay and which we must restore. There was something a little bit spiritual about the speech. I was not only moved by it, I was impressed, as an actor, because you can tell when there’s a bit of fake. It’s very easy. When you saw Thatcher it was always fake. The head to one side, the pursed mouth. It was fake!’ ‘What about Blair?’ Berkoff greatly admired him in the early years. ‘There was an ability to touch something inside him that lit the air, you know, he set the atmosphere on fire with his passion. Now unfortunately Gordon,’ his tone drops to a throaty burr, ‘he puts on this voice. And then he puts on this smile. And, oh, it’s horrible. But Cameron never does it, never smiles, just comes on and tells it straight.’
‘Would you be tempted to vote for him?’ ‘Yes, absolutely. What have Labour done for us the last eight years or so? It’s not been very healthy. They’ve cheated and chiselled us. They’ve made the Labour party a mask covering a lot of very, very greedy entrepreneurs. They even campaigned to turn the Dome into a casino, really passionately campaigned for it, saying casinos would regenerate the regions. I thought, that’s how Labour sees regeneration? With casinos to further demoralise people? Labour, I thought, you need a swift kick up the arse. Because this is not the way!’ He breaks off and chuckles at the intensity of his condemnation. But this time he isn’t joking.
On the Waterfront is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 25 April; tickets: 0845 481 1870
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