Decadence
Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre Season ends: July 21
On the web: www.maidment.auckland.ac.nz
British playwright Steven Berkoff is always a merciless - and amusing - dissector of the English class system, and in 1994 starred in a film of this play with Joan Collins,
both of them playing dual roles. Berkoff devotees, actor Michael Lawrence and director Paul Gittins, have staged his plays in Auckland regularly over the past decade. Lawrence takes to the stage once more in this production as Steve/Les, with Jennifer Ward-Lealand outglamming Joan herself in the delicious role(s) of Helen/Sybil.
Says Berkoff: "Decadence is a study of the English upper classes, so called by virtue of strangulated vowel sounds rather than any real achievement. They achieve pleasures very often in direct relation to the pain they cause in achieving it. They cause intolerable suffering to achieve exquisite pates, boiling lobsters alive and hunting down defenceless animals to give [the hunters] a sense of purpose on Sundays."
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