ABSTRACT
Steven Berkoff's Greek relocates the Oedipus myth to the East End of London in 1979, the last year of James Callaghan's failing Labour government. Eddy at first contemplates putting out his eyes, 'Greek style', but then he decides to accept what he has done; the play and the opera end with a triumphant rhapsody of love for his mother. When Mark-Anthony Turnage expressed an interest in using one of Berkoff's plays as the basis for a libretto, the playwright recommended Greek on the grounds that it was his most 'operatic' work. The recognition-scene in Greek is one of Berkoff's finest tragi-comic inventions. The underlying dramatic technique is Berkoff's – people hear the other actors as chorus, punctuated by Eddy's comments, in both play and opera; but the effect is far sharper in the opera, since the repeated words of the Pub Chorus enable Turnage to characterize them in the music.
