Berkoff’s ‘Londons’: Staging psycho-geographies of the feared and the ecstatic

In this paper, certain aspects of Berkoff’s ‘London plays’ (East, Greek, Decadence and West) are explored. Through the styles and conventions of ‘physical theatres’, it is argued that Berkoff ‘physicalises’ London (or ‘Londons’); that Berkoff plays with London ‘with all available means’ as sites of the body, sites of memory, sites of seduction. It is suggested these become ‘agons’ of real- and psycho-geographies playing to the fears and ecstasies of the spectator as suffering is viewed from responses of the empathetic.