Feature: Theatre - Steven Berkoff talks about his new play Biblical Tales (New End Theatre, from August 13th)

WHEN it comes to laying blame for the sad state of the world, there’s nothing quite like a blast from Steven Berkoff to wake you from your slumbers.

The doyenne actor and playwright was 73 on Tuesday, which coincided with the world premiere of his new play, Biblical Tales, now at Hampstead’s New End Theatre for a four-week season that will undoubtedly stir consciences. And controversy, too.
 

Berkoff has brilliantly gone back to the Bible stories of Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath and Moses and Pharaoh and drawn modern day parallels with the current ills of society – greed, betrayal, lust, a lack of compassion and trust.

“They are all on the modern agenda,” he declares. “We live in a world of greedy bankers and lying politicians. 

“We are supposed to be a kind of society which has Jewish-Christian values embedded in it. Yet we make a mockery of worship in the churches.

“And when the Queen is anointed or when Christmas comes around, here we are having less and less to do with those ancient laws and values – and all while the church itself is in horrific disarray.

“We’ve got so much [so] let us hold back for a moment: let us be wiser and show some compassion – not hunger for more and more and more to fulfil some messianic destiny.”

The Middle East – and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – are one key target in the dramas acted out by his company of six over 90 minutes as they delve into the compelling mysteries of the Bible – in particular with the story of Samson.
 

“God gave the Hebrew race an ability to use its strength to defend itself, and yet Samson had this pact, called a covenant, with God not to betray where he has his strength,” says Berkoff.

“For the sake of Delilah, who seduced him into giving it away with all the cunning and the wiles of women, Samson betrayed that trust.

“Betrayal is now almost commonplace. 

“Unfortunately, our worst betrayal is possibly in Israel, with Prime Minister Netanyahu over the future of Gaza and the West Bank. 

“This is like Adam and Eve too – like the Serpent again. And Prime Minister Netanyahu is the Serpent.”

Berkoff’s play likens the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahamadinejad, to a modern Pharoah in his desire to wipe out Israel, but he confesses too that his own feelings about Israel, as an unorthodox Jew, are compromised by its failure to accept unconditional peace talks.

“No Jew in the world likes what is going on in Gaza unless they are obsessively, fanatically and emotionally tied to Israel,” he says. “I am psychologically and emotionally tied but at the same time you also have to see Israel’s faults.

“Of course I support Israel. I love Israel and I’ve worked there, but unless an attempt is made to say we must have peace talks now, [with] no pre-conditions, and sort it, then the problem lingers.

“It’s like a cancer, and the cancer is growing – not just growing on the West Bank, [but] all over the world, in every nation and every city, from New York to Paris to Berlin.”

Talk to Berkoff about the new coalition government and he cheers up. 

“Excellent, absolutely excellent,” he cries. 

“Not only do we need to get away from sterile party politics but also the fraud that Labour has become.

“The people who decided what they call New Labour – although they claim to be socialists who worship at the pulpit of Keir Hardie – also decided they could be rich, that there was no shame in having money and being a champagne socialist.”

But the end result, he protests, is that everyone has had “their hands in the till”, claiming massive wages for those working in public posts. 

“That is nothing to do with Labour and a fair and just society,” says Berkoff. “And I don’t think they will ever recover.”
 

• Biblical Tales is at New End Theatre until August 28. 0870 033 2733.