Romeo and Juliet bored him, but Steven Berkoff’s play Greek changed Sean Curran’s life
- When Sean Curran saw Romeo and Juliet, he was bored. When he watched Steven Berkoff’s Greek, it set him on a path to drama, and to Hong Kong
Steven Berkoff’s 1988 revival at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre of his own play Greek (1980), a reworking of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex updated to contemporary London, presented a confrontational, stylised, deconstructivist theatrical spectacle typical of the playwright, director and actor’s work.
Sean Curran, co-founder and co-artistic director of innovative Hong Kong theatre company Theatre du Pif, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
I was 23 and I’d been taking drama classes in Edinburgh, Scotland. My friend had been taking them and he said, “You should come along – it’s a good laugh.”
I’d never done any drama before. I was at college, studying to become a physical education teacher, after previously hoping to become a football player.
The woman who ran the drama course had studied with Berkoff in mime school in the 1960s. She knew I was going down to visit friends in London in the summer, and she said, “You should go and see one of Steven’s productions.”