East, a “play of boundless vitality and a roller-coaster invention of poetic violence and excitement” is coming to The Emporium in Brighton!
East, by Steven Berkoff, is a verse play that was first premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975 and has since won the Stage Award for Best Ensemble Work. The play deals with growing up and rites of passage in the East End of London and “hones in on the lives and loves of the underclasses, the spiked social injustices which continue to divide the have and have-nots today, and consign the poorest to invisibility until they explode in rage”
Steven Berkoff is an English actor, author, playwright and theatre director. His acting credits include Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, General Orlov in Octopussy and Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop. His earliest plays were adaptations of work by Franz Kafka and then he moved onto writing verse plays including East. Described as “in-yer-face theatre’ by Drama critic Aleks Sierz, Berkoff’s theatre is “so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react…it is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation”
Running from April 26th to May 21st, tickets for East are on sale now. The play is not suitable for those under sixteen. You can book tickets here.
Holly Martin
feature image: Chris Boland via the Creative Commons license
