Steven Berkoff's Dog/ Actor is an evening of two monologues performed by the bewitching talent that is Stephen Smith. Produced by Threedumb Theatre, the summer tour is taking in Liverpool, Cambridge, Bath, Wimbledon and Edinburgh, but I saw it on a hot evening in the intimate Etcetera Theatre in Camden, a detail that has relevance later on!
The first of the monologues, Dog, offers an insight into the day of a British low-class yob (to use Berkoff's words) as he navigates the streets with his fearsome beast of a pitbull. Dressed like a national front mannequin, with skinhead, jeans, boots and braces in perfect order, the piece opens with an extended mime. Smith performs with comic bravado, running into the audience and circling the stage in the wake of his demon dog. The tension and energy in his muscles and movements was so convincing that he was a fountain of sweat in five minutes flat (I said the hot evening would return!) and I found myself repeatedly looking down to the spot where the imagined dog would have resided to check it wasn't really there!
The mime was a brilliant choice of opening to a rather problematic monologue that tightrope walks the difficult line between portraying and humanising a monster. The character's prejudiced, racist attitudes are so obviously and uncomfortably repugnant. Yet give a man a dog, prove he has a heart with his love for the creature, and immediately he elicits sympathy. Even when that dog, played with terrifying rabidity as Smith throws himself to the ground and rolls his eyes back like a tortured devil, is a fiend you wouldn't touch with a barge pole. This wonderful paradox, the co-mingling of tenderness and bigotry, is exactly where theatrical drama succeeds, drawing complicated layers within characters who are both repulsive and attractive. However, the story doesn't go far enough in exploiting this magic territory and although there is a great deal of empathy generated, there isn't a great deal of plot. The real triumph of the piece is Smith's mime. He even transforms a simple act of graffiti vandalism into a moment of comic delight.
The second monologue, Actor, follows an aspiring thespian on an unending stroll through town in which he meets various fellow actors who are all doing better than him. The cheerful delight he expresses to their face is beautifully undercut by the reaction he shares with the audience, which is a few notches closer to bitter. This duplicity is very effectively represented by the layer of white grease paint the actor wears as a mask. Again, with the heat of the theatre, that mask began to drip with gothic menace fairly swiftly, the actor's face disintegrating before our eyes, another powerful metaphor for the disintegration of the actor's 'self' in the face of constant rejection.
Having enjoyed Smith's Edgar Allen Poe monologues during the Watford Fringe Festival, I was delighted to see that the segue between pieces, in which he transforms from one character to another in front of the audience, was retained. It's such a simple but effective way of foregrounding the craft of the actor, the work of deconstructing and building character. But also it's just so exciting to watch because that transformation is usually the bit that's hidden from view. It feels very exposing, like you're being let into a moment of vulnerability. This, along with the clever selection of monologues that play with and within the horror and gothic genres, has established for Smith a senes of style, purpose and mission which is genuinely remarkable in an actor so young.
A compliment too for the lighting and sound design which gave life to the simple black box set. In Dog, the hellish red used to distinguish dog from owner was sharp and startling, while in Actor the use of sound looping was ingenious. It began as the charming soundtrack to the actor's day, but ended as a depressing comment on the repetitive nature of his life rejections, both personal and professional, as he delved into yet another hopeless Hamlet audition.
Overall, a brilliant performance that reminds us why we love live theatre.
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