Arts & entertainment A 15% OFF TOTAL BILL Visit the Thal Restaurant tka blends , atmospheric elegance with culina delights. Featuring the bubble Drink 1afe 5092.5 Woodward Ave. • Royal Oak, MI +8075 (248) 288 0002 - Open: Mon - Thur. I I am -1 0 m • Fri. I am- i pm `sat.2.pm-11 pm • 5un. 12-10pm Lunch served ti13pm Mon-fri 15 mile & Woodward in The Northwood ,51-lopping Center i3 The One & Only Creperie in Town! • 10 Gourmet Soups Daily • Daily Lunch Specials (Save $1.00) available 11-3 p.m. • Sweet Crepes Open Monday -Saturday for Lunch & Dinner • Fresh Salads FRESH SOLIDS, SALADS & CREPES 172 N. Old Woodward (NE corner of Maple & N. Old Woodward) Independently owned I*1 (248) 2830260 0 22556 Orchard Lake Rd. Just N. of 13 Mile On the East Side (248) 626-0804 rti Dine-In • Carry-Out Open Mon.-Sot. 6:30 - 3:00 Sun. 8:00 - 3:00 • • • • • • • COUPON 10 /0 OFF TOTAL BILL EVERYDAY Huge Eggwhite Omelets Homemade Soup Waffles Lo-Cal Menu Bagels & Lox Not Valid With Any Other Offer Fresh Salads Expires 06/30/02 Fresh-Baked Muffins I. a r COUPON MI MI MB -MI FREE CUP OF HOMEMADE SOUP WITH ANY SALAD FROM OUR LARGE SALAD MENU Not Valid With Any Other Offer Expires 06/30/02 0000596 1 50 a Real bagel size, Real bagel taste. 6/21 2002 70 Phone (248) 960-3111 14 Mile 6,- Haggerty Rd. in the Newberry Snare Shopping Center from page 69 approach [Shakespeare] more freshly. American audiences have probably seen more Shakespeare. There are so many Shakespeare festivals all over America. with coupon. Expires 7-31-02 • Savory Crepe Sandwiches TASTE FOR BLOOD JN: Our readers will be interested in your Jewish background. How has your background influenced you, do you think? Was it a big part of your life? SB: I was born and brought up in the Jewish East End of London part of the time. It obviously informed me and shaped me in my early youth. And created in me a taste for that culture, which has never really left me. I've always been keenly aware of my Jewish origins and antecedents and have pursued it fairly passionately in terms of the literature that I read. And I make sure that I keep up with the thoughts, and the ideas and the art — [the] creativity. Some of my favorite writers are Jewish writers. Mainly people like Bashevis Singer, Franz Kafka, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer. But also Maimoriides and Spinoza. The Jewish writers have always featured very much as part of my influence in my life, as well as Jewish culture. JN: Has your Jewish background influenced your interpretation of Shylock, do you think? SB: Yes, certainly. I see it written very much as a Jewish cliche, certainly as an anti-Semitic construct. When you play Shylock, you can play it with dignity. I think it works, and I think the breadth of Shakespeare allows you that. I choose not to because I want to play it as he is painted, so that we see - how he was painted as a villain, as a clown, as a horror. And if you attempt to dignify him, you're trying to escape the image that was painted of him at the time. JN: Several years ago, you played- Hitler in War and Remembrance. What was that like? How does that performance connect to your ideas about the depiction of villainy? SB: That was a pinnacle for me, and I really enjoyed playing it. It was a fasci- nating and horrifying character. And I enjoyed it more the more because it was a villain that everybody knew. I was challenging the public conception of him. When I created Hitler, with the aid of a little make-up and a mustache, I felt I was convinc- ing. JN: Did it give you any additional insight into the psychology of his evil? SB: Absolutely. Yes. You can see what he was all about. Not a lot that I didn't know already. It was simple. I don't think there's any- thing complex about Hitler, really. He was using scapegoats as all villains do. It's the nature of the villain to need a scapegoat. You need an opposition to prove in some way that you are being, not only persecuted yourself, but that you have to overcome these people by destroying them. It's only weak people that do this, that need scapegoats. JN: Is today's conception of villainy different than it was in Shakespeare's time? SB: Everybody was a villain [in the Elizabethan period]. Kings were vil- lains. Princes. Half the nation was engaged in villainy. It was much more part and parcel of everyday living. The villain was shown to be the devil — a Machiavellian devil — that we must be aware of. There were bat- tles between good and evil. Today, very few plays have this. If you pick up any play, there's very sel- dom a villain even in it. Films have villains. But for some reason, they're absent from today's drama. Drama has become so weak that there is no need for the villain. Everybody is so weak and vapid, that there is nothing to fight against, noth- ing for the villain to "dislodge," if you like. Because they're all so spinelessly, uselessly, drearily vapid. JN: What are you working on cur- rently? SB: I've written a play called The Secret Love Life of Ophelia. It's a treat- ment of the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. It's my own text. But I've written it in iambic pen- tameter and rhyming couplets. It's a play which I would love to be put on in America as soon as'possible. ❑ Steven Berkoff performs Shakespeare's Villains: A Masterclass in Evil at the Power Center in Ann Arbor 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 26. $20-$30. (734) 647-2278 or http://vvww.mlive.com/aasf/ At 8 p.m. Thursday, June 27, Shakespeare's Villains will be per- formed at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids. Call (616) 451- 8001 for performance times and ticket information.