Hi Nicola,
Great that you are doing Decadence. Lucky students!!
There are a couple of links on the plays here
www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-link-play-2.htmlSome photos of performance here
www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-photo-decadence.htmlThere are also two dissertations which include Decadence, one by Craig Rosen and one by Deborah Knight. Both are worth scanning to find the relevant sections on Decadence, for example (from Knights dissertation):
"The scene depicting the couple’s fully clothed enactment of the hunting woman’s relationship to her horse renders Steve’s desire for subordination quite explicit, while the hold Helen maintains over him is made clear in the way her masterly narratives cater to his preference for reported or simulated sex. Helen’s beautifully seductive but ephemeral smile is shown in the film to be Steve’s heart-gladdening reward, while its constant solidifying into relentless discontent is the whiplash which keeps his wallet, if not his flies, open. The ‘decadence’ here is not of the joyous Bacchanal sort that is supposed to have characterized that of the Roman empire, but of the type that the script depicts as arising from the corporal punishments and gay initiations of all-boys British boarding schools, the impervious smug complacency that is inherited along with admittance into the world’s most prestigious club of hooligans, the House of Lords, and the perverse effects of the women’s financial dependence upon their men being hardly improved by both sexes’ severe upper class sexual repression."
You can find the dissertations here
www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-study.htmlBerkoff directed the film of Decadence. It is available as a video on Amazon
www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-shop.htmlbut costs just under £60- not worth it.
I hope this helps and you are welcome to please ask more here. Let us know how it goes.
Best wishes
Iain