A TESTAMENT TO YOUTH'S ENERGY
Author: Bob Evans
Date: 03/11/1986
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

I HAVE been a fan of Berkoff's work since seeing East when he and his
company performed the play as part of the 1976 Adelaide Festival.
Ten years after, it is a pleasure to find that the play has lost none of
its pungency and vigour, particularly in the hands of the Nepean
graduates.

Theatre Nepean is presenting a season of two Berkoff plays, East and West.
The season runs until November 14 with the plays alternating through the
week and performed back-to-back on Saturday nights.

East and West are not pretty plays. They are rude and violent, taking
their manners and style from the place and the people that are their
inspiration -the disenfranchised and brutalised poor in London's lower
working-class community. But they are also tender, romantic and funny at
times.

East and West may be a testament to youth and energy, as Berkoff suggests,
but in this world the expression of that potential is squandered in
violence and self-destruction.

East is not so much a narrative as a series of harrowing introductions.
Its structure is descriptive and largely disjointed.

West advances as Mike and his gang are challenged by the Curley King of
Hoxton to single combat in a fight to the death.

By invoking the ethos of classic mythology and by incorporating specific
imagery from Shakespeare's tragedies, notably Hamlet and Lear, Berkoff
elevates Mike's dilemma to a universal level.

The fight scene, when it comes, is another mock-heroic delight with Mike,
now dressed as a clown, complete with giant shoes and a bulbous red nose,
doing battle with an inflatable dinosaur on the Hackney Marshes.

That this scene can be both enthralling and hilarious after 3 1/2 hours of
the play is a testament to the skills of Berkoff's conception and David
Wenham's performance.

Wenham gives an assertive and dynamic performance as Mike.

He and John Simpson work well as a team, whether they are locked into the
mock-balletic choreography of a backstreet brawl, miming sex with
gargantuan genitalia or riding a Vincent HRD.

As Sylv, Anni Finsterer brings a raunchy, hard-edged quality to the role.
Her performance smoulders with energy and solidity but lacks the necessary
modulation of fragility that can add a further dimension of pathos to the
part.

Both Samantha Bladon and Craig Mathewson, in their roles as Mike's
parents, have to contend with the unenviable problem of playing beyond
their age and, it would seem from this, their range.

However, one other notable and highly praiseworthy facet of the production
is the music composed and performed by Rafael May and Martin Watson. It is
brilliantly atmospheric. So, too, is the sparse set of twisted door frames
and simple furniture of John Studholme.

A final reservation concerns Theatre Nepean's rationale in performing both
plays back to back. To see the two on the same night requires not only
stamina but a certain bloody-minded determination.

The experience could have been less daunting had there been role changes
between one play and the other, or, to have been more daring with
Berkoff's text and coalesced the plays into one.

However, Nepean can be proud of the high standard of work on display which
gives rise to powerful and meaningful theatre. That is no mean achievement
from either students or fully-paid up professional actors.