Decadence

Descripción

A scarce and unusual copy of Steven Berkoff's infamous play Decadence. No publication date is given in the text, but on the front endpaper it gives the first date of performance as 14th July 1981, and in the top corner a buyer of this text has put her name and the date 22.10.81, so it must be 1981. Also included are some interesting items stapled in. There's two tickets for early performances (one by the Almeida Theatre Company in a Left Luggage Room in Edinburgh, one at the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street, London). There's a review from The Times, hand-dated 21st July 1981, one from The Guardian, hand-dated 15.1.83, a four-page programme from the Arts Theatre production, a review from The Observer, hand-dated 1st November 81, and a photocopy of most of a piece about Berkoff from the "New Musical Express" [NME] as a hand-written note calls it. This NME piece is very lively. Sample: "I'm a Shakespearian writer. I take violence and put it on the stage and through energy and power, metamorphose it into art". All in all, a really good little contemporary compendium. The playbook itself has 28 pages, still tightly bound. The pages show a few signs of shelfwear and handling, but they are largely very clean, if just a little dog-eared. The cover is more creased and worn, and pierced in three places where three of the items described above have been stapled in. Taken as a whole, it's quite an exciting way of encountering Berkoff's aggressive drama, much better than the Faber editions which never felt like they did him and his plays justice. You need something that's raw and messier. As the NME piece says, Berkoff describes his own work as "mad, lyrical, subversive, revolutionary, attacking the system through outrage and anger". You get more of that here. N° de ref. del artículo 000903

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