An Actor's Lament[author-post-rating] (2/5)

Steven Berkoff’s face isn’t as massive in real life as the adverts would have you believe. The gigantic billboards and posters around the city promote the mythology of Berkoff as a larger-than-life performance, declaring him a “phenomenon”. No evidence of this is visible in An Actor’s Lament, however, which is pretty much a damp squib and feels more like an elongated rant formed out of bitterness rather than a considered piece of art.

The premise is simple: a writer (Jay Benedict) has a conversation with two actors (Berkoff and Andree Bernard) about the state of contemporary theatre. That’s basically it. They cover the problem with directors, with critics, with producers and with playwrights. The piece instead tries to persuade us of the brilliance of actors and the need to bring back the role of the actor-manager. Oh, and it’s all written in a rather plodding verse.

To my mind, it felt a little like I had been trasported back in time to the late 1970s. The performance style is hammy, indulgent and overly meditative. This, I think, is intended as some kind of joke, but the fact that there is no subversion of it or reference to its navel-gazing makes me question this somewhat. The mimes are imprecise, and a lot of the time seem to be made up on the spot.

Benedict and Bernard do a good job of coping with Berkoff’s stunted script, though even they can’t save its tawdriness. At the centre, the man himself seems self-conscious, looking out to the audience for affirmation and perching his hand on his beer gut. It’s a strange piece of theatre and sometimes even suggests audiences are the problem. Though many practitioners cite Berkoff as an inspiration for their work, he seems to be stuck in the past, unaware that the rest of the world has moved on.

An Actor’s Lament is at the Assembly Rooms until 20 August. For more information and tickets visit the Edinburgh Fringe website.