Roast

by Steven Berkoff

An 'appalling tale', so described by Berkoff in his author's note for 'Roast', this play describes a horrific anti-Semitic story in such rich and exquisite language that it acts as a sort of morphine-like cloak, numbing our ability to resist such an utterly gruesome account of a mother telling a story to a child. The antique repetition of its language sets this play apart from our own age, feeling almost late nineteenth century in style, as Wilde or Maeterlinck might have described the atrocity of a twentieth-century world war.