Star tells of Berkoff’s Women
BERKOFF’S Women, the compendium of monologues by British theatre’s arguably most singular provocateur, is not for the faint-hearted. “I’m sort of scared,” says Linda Marlowe of her revival.
During the hour-long show, which she brings to the Tron Theatre for three nights this weekend, Marlowe embodies characters from early Steven Berkoff classics including Decadence, Greek, East and Agamemnon.
Her fearless embodiment of Berkoff’s street-smart poetry transforms it into a ferocious set of miniatures that makes for an intimate and unsettling experience. Or at least it did the last time Berkoff’s Women was in Scotland just shy of 20 years ago, when Marlowe premiered it at the Assembly Rooms during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Since, the show has toured the world, and Marlowe has created six more solo works inbetween regular gigs on stage, film and television. The last few years alone has seen her be a regular in Eastenders while on stage she appeared in Colin Higgins’ Harold and Maude. Why, then, is Marlowe scared? “It’s a different age compared to 20 years ago,” she says, “so I’m slightly apprehensive. I’m thinking, will audiences be shocked by the language? But then I’m like, for goodness sake, Linda, it’s never stopped you before, and Steven doesn’t mince his expletives.”
Marlowe was doing a workshop at a school a few weeks ago, and was asked to do a turn. She chose to do the fox-hunting scene from Decadence, Berkoff’s portrait of class division in Thatcher’s Britain, but “I had to take all the f **** out.”
Berkoff’s Women came about following a suggestion from Berkoff himself, with whom Marlowe worked over 20 years. “He said I could take the power back into my own hands and travel round with it. I didn’t know how it would go down, but it was a good show to start with because it’s so upfront, and it did empower me in some way. It made people notice me again, and enhanced my career. It also gave me a lovely sense of freedom to be onstage and to talk to the audience.”
It’s hard to imagine Marlowe not being noticed, since she arrived in England from Australia in 1950 aged 10. Her father was actor Peter Bathurst, who worked with Peter Finch in the Sydney-based Mercury Theatre company before Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh whisked him away to help make him a star of the London stage. Finch encouraged Marlowe’s parents to follow suit and join him in Dolphin Square.
By this time, Marlowe had already decided she wanted to go to ballet school, an idea compounded once off the boat and on the Liverpool to London train, where she went wandering and announced her intentions to a stranger who turned out to be John Hampshire, brother of actress Susan Hampshire.
“He said his mother had a ballet school,” says Marlowe, “and he lived in Dolphin Square as well. That’s what changed the course of my life.”
Marlowe enrolled in June Hampshire’s Chelsea-based Hampshire School, then on to Arts Ed and the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Her early career saw her tread a familiar path for young actresses. “I was blonde and photogenic,” she says, “and my agent put me up for things that Liz Fraser might do. I did some commercial stuff, but I wanted to do something more exciting. Because I’d trained as a ballerina, I always had this idea about theatre being more physical, but there was none of that at the time in the UK.”
Someone suggested she get in touch with Berkoff, who was exploring physical theatre with his London Theatre Group company. Berkoff went to see Marlowe in the play, Dynamo, at the King’s Head, before meeting her in a pub in Paddington. “He was doing try-outs for Agamemnon,” Marlowe says, “and I ended up at the Roundhouse in The Trial.”
This was 1973, the year Marlowe took the title role in Big Zapper, in which she played a kind of female James Bond Kung Fu expert. “I had a rather illustrious career doing secondrate material,” she deadpans.
The Trial was “a baptism of fire. Everyone else had worked with Steven, but I hadn’t, and he didn’t tell you what to do. He just expected you to do it. We had a huge falling out and I said I wasn’t what he needed. He got someone else, then after 15 minutes decided to ask me to come back. He turned up at my flat in Baker Street and stayed for eight hours. He wouldn’t go until I agreed to come back.”
One of the by-products of this was the formation of cabaret rock troupe The Sadista Sisters. This was with fellow alumnus of The Trial, Jude Alderson, Teresa D’abreu and Jackie Taylor. They toured and cut an album.
“We started doing shows about being strong women,” she says. “Then we started going in different directions. Jude Alderson wanted it to be a total feminist thing with no rock star influences, whereas we wanted it to be more like punk anarchist feminism.”
Marlowe eventually left the group. “We discovered that if we thought men were bullies, then we were just as bad bullying each other.”
Marlowe went on to play Gertrude to Berkoff’s Hamlet. “You can’t be in awe of him,” she says. “You have to stand up to him, and that’s why it works.”
Berkoff has been in the news of late regarding his own new solo show, Harvey, in which he aims to get inside the head of film producer Harvey Weinstein. “He told me he was doing it,” says Marlowe, “and I thought, oh, you’re brave doing that.”
Marlowe hasn’t seen it yet. “You never know,” she says diplomatically. “People might be fascinated.”
Marlowe’s own maverick career took her on a diverse route from Royal Shakespeare Company and Eastenders. In the latter she played opposite Timothy West as aging matriarch Sylvie Carter, who came to a tragic end caused by dementia.
“I was offered the part when I was standing in the mud in Edinburgh,” says Marlowe. “My agent said if I did it more people would come to my solo shows. I said I was only going to do it if it was an interesting part, and I didn’t want to be in it forever. People still come up to me and say, you’re Sylvie. I tell them I’ve left, but they say you’ll always be Sylvie to us. Fifty years of work and I’ve finally been recognised.”
How Berkoff’s Women stands up in Glasgow remains to be seen, but Marlowe doesn’t sound scared any more. “I don’t think the pieces have dated,” she says. “Some show what women’s lives used to be like, but there’s a strength there as well.”
People still come up to me and say, you’re Sylvie. I tell them I’ve left, but they say you’ll always be Sylvie to us. Fifty years of work and I’ve finally been recognised