Gross Intruder

                                                                                                                Or,                                                         
THE FLESH MADE REAL

                                                                                               

                                    On Steven Berkoff’s  HARVEY,  (East Productions, 2019)

 

Berkoff’s first departure from Plays, was his seminal book, Gross Intrusion,

A collection of stories so potent, that both blood and the heart achieved voice,

Coming together, as one, across the heart, flesh and senses,

While at the same time announcing desire’s intent to trap choice.

 

And so it proves here in this new monologue about Weinstein,

By crawling into the ear of the ingrate, to source full expression

Through a cigar sucking mouth and snaked cock, Berkoff gets to grips

With the beast, as well as the serpent, reared as they are,

 

For temptation, which in turns wrecks the palace,

Forcing it to come crashing into unrepentant seas and sharp rocks.

With a woeful voiceover that lists the Harvey’s litany of achievements

Both in and out of his bathrobe,  we examine Steven Berkoff’s own face

 

As it starts to populate Weinstein’s flesh, as he creates the confession,

By which he seeks justification for the natural shocks flesh is heir to

Once man made privilege attains place. ‘Its all a transaction,’

Harvey states, a phrase that is refrained and repeated, as Weinstein’s

 

Selfishness and self loathing is the supposed gold-diggers claim and their cost.

Harvey saw that as the way, Hollywood’s dark tradition, even if his sugar daddy,

Was more salty than sweet, as the boss,

                                                                                 He could have the pick of the crop,

Along with the staff, store and shopfront,  as if his was the one destination,

 

Sending siren calls out from his cock. If what seems to be hundreds of women

Were lost, and in being found, quickly shattered, then it was in their terms

Of employment that this delusional man saw the right, to do as he did,

And to practically do as was bidden, something clearly captured in Berkoff’s

 

Performance; although older now he’s still raging, as that distinctive face

Looks for answers  under a film studio’s judgement light.

Berkoff paints with pathos and lust and Weinstein’s chauvinism,

He shows  how the fat man’s masturbation is the sad romance of the rose

 

That can never bloom fragrantly, but only show the thorns sown within us,

Catching the soul, tearing something that instead of reaching out

Will fall closed. Weinstein’s morals. His need to master beauty, while ugly;

The pale pretence at perfection that was to stain each beautiful girl

 

With his grime. Berkoff holds him up to the light by squatting in the darkness

Beside him, with nothing but false memory to confide in across a new eternity

Of wronged time. An imaginary cigar pleasures him. It is all he will have left of sensation.

The breathing in of past evil reminding him of soft lips, forced into sucking

 

All of the strength from the sour, a sick imitation of cinema’s shining kiss.

 

Harvey’s body is key to the traps he’s set waiting. Through his personal hell,

Enter heaven, by blessing the sort of skin most abhor. 

The only beauty Harvey had lay in the films he engendered. 

 

But what actual life they reflected could never be seen through locked doors. 

Actresses were cut in mid career if they spurned him.

Production staff denigrated, masturbated upon,  cauterised,

As if Weinstein’s sex crimes were a parody of love’s pleasure

 

False scenes, badly written,  in which a sad man’s grunts passed as lines.

Berkoff’s play reveals that if you are born as he was with no true means to echo

The demands of the business of beauty that you have tried to establish in life,

You will stain the skin of your prey as well as the souls that you insult,

 

And this is what Berkoff essays as he raises questions, about those

Who knowing Weinstein’s reputation, betrayed their own prospects,

As Harvey betrayed kids and wife.  The style is conversational, calm,

But with the expected crests and crescendos

 

That mark all of Berkoff’s plays, poems, stories, journals and shows,

As they’re staged. But there is also an improvisational air,

As the writer forgoes past poetics, to embrace words far more natural,

Intent on exploring easily relatable worlds, as he’s aged.

 

From his worlds of East End tempered myth, and the old Greek burn,

Via Shakespeare, Berkoff has peered over, and crashed down to earth

With this piece.  To examine the current time and place while charting

The misapprehension and horror to do with those who bend power

 

Ttowards their own warped release. Jimmy Stewart’s giant rabbit, unseen,

Exert’s a similar fascination as Berkoff’s; this Harvey, once vivid,

Will soon be invisible, too, whether in prison, or port, as he sails to escape

Reputation, the gross intruder as exile, thanks to each corrupted kiss

 

Smearing truth.  So, here is a new play from a man, unafraid of convention,

About a man who deceived it. And yet monsters like Weinstein will only 

Ever reveal partial clues. For power stains and reshapes.  Power mutates.

We perform it.  As Berkoff does here.  There’s no rabbit.  And no hat, too.

 

Merely Harvey,

 

At the gates of hell,

Wanking  

 

The fucked penetrator,

 

Worse than an actor, rejected,

 

Or former king turned to peasant,

Whose court has closed:

 

The heart’s fool.

 

                 

                                                                                                                   

 

 

David Erdos 27th July 2019


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