Steven Berkoff brings Frankenstein to the Festival of Chichester

The event features music from the Romantic period played by concert pianist Elena Toponogova, It also has a focus on the poetry of the women Romantic poets as read by Emily Rose Smith.

Tickets £15 from the Novium, tel 01243 816525 https://festivalofchichester.co.uk/event/event-sw21-frankenstein-with-steven-berkoff/

Organiser Barry Smith said: “The South Downs Poetry Festival is delighted to link up with the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association to celebrate the genius of the women Romantic writers. Mary Shelley created one of the most astonishing tales, virtually founding a new genre with Frankenstein. Adapted for the stage and of course the cinema in versions by Boris Karloff and Kenneth Brannagh, who better than the legendary actor and playwright Steven Berkoff to bring Frankenstein to dramatic life? With its settings in graveyards and experimental laboratories, mountain ranges and the Arctic waste, with its chases and dreadful murders, executions, body-snatching and confrontations between a deluded scientist and the dreadful being he has brought to life, Frankenstein epitomises what everyone expects from a classic horror story guaranteed to thrill and to make you look over your shoulder on a dark night!”

Berkoff is the author of a range of acclaimed plays and adaptations including East, West and a unique take on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, as well as versions of Kafka’s Trial and Metamorphosis. Films Steven has acted in range from literary classics to James Bond, including A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy, Rambo, Absolute Beginners and The Krays. He directed and co-starred with Joan Collins in the film version of his play Decadence. Often cast in villainous roles, his range is extensive, from Beverley Hills Cops to Edgar Alan Poe’s horror story, The Tell Tale Heart. As a theatre practitioner, his trademark Berkoffian theatre encompasses elements of physical theatre, total theatre and expressionism. He has also published a variety of books on the theatre, a novel and an autobiography as well as being influential in developing an internationally acclaimed style of theatre performance.

The music for the evening includes a range of Romantic pieces by women composers including Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Lili Boulanger and Amy Beach with Elena Toponogova on piano. Elena is a concert pianist and chamber musician based in London. Her main interest is Romantic repertoire, especially Medtner. Elena has been performing as a soloist and chamber musician in the UK and Europe, appearing at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, Salzburg Wiener Saal and St Martin-in-the-Fields among many other famous venues.

Emily Rose Smith has performed in London and Chichester, acting with Nick Moran in Chekov, Sam West in Dr Faustus and reading with Dame Patricia Routledge and Roger McGough in Chichester Cathedral. As a singer, she is currently touring a performance with novelist/poet/singer-songwriter Louis de Bernieres. She will read from the poetry of a range of women Romantics to demonstrate that there was more to the Romantic period than the works of Byron, Shelley and Keats. Contemporary Sussex poets Claudia Court and SDPF director Barry Smith get a look in with short readings of new work to go alongside the Romantic classics.

Frankenstein with Steven Berkoff, Tuesday, July 8, 7pm, Novium, Chichester.