Tonight at the Theatre Royal in Bath, Steven Berkoff shares two of the one-man pieces from his celebrated solo cannon, The Tell Tale Heart and Dog. Giving all of himself to his audience, he presents the work via the conduit of a vibrant single body. Berkoff is a heightened, expressionistic, ever-able thespian who is able to immerse an audience into his world with nothing more than his own body and voice. This is total theatre: the stage is bare, Berkoff is everything. Only minimal lighting cues allow for the most simplistic of scene changes – we need no other theatrical flourishes here.

The Tell Tale Heart, an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe classic, opens the evening and is quite simply a masterclass of perfection. The acting is vibrant, and reels its audience quickly into a dark world – a hideous place where in-character narration guides us through the story of one man’s psychosis: a paranoid obsession with a neighbour whom he eventually murders, mutilates and hides under his floorboards. Timing and expression are key: choreographed facial mannerisms bring each humorously sick moment to life with a playful glee. The elements of mime are simply sublime. To watch this sinister being peer around the corner of an elderly man’s bedroom door at the witching hour, or see him hurriedly rush down a spiral staircase, or even embody the footsteps of a party of men where nothing physically is manifest on stage is glorious. The characterisation is expressed with the ease of a master who neither disrupts nor brings attention to how adept at his craft he truly is.

So it is somewhat sad that Dog, the story of a football hooligan and his most faithful of companions from London’s East End, made for somewhat awkward viewing. The story is short and sees Berkoff flip between manifestations of a lout and his dog. As with the previous work there are natural flourishes that engage the audience directly and seem to have a certain charm to them, but beyond that we are left with nothing but a base and very basic caricature. Where the expressionistic style gave birth to a beautifully dark and gothic world in the Poe adaptation here it feels forced, straining against a weak narrative that at points feels almost insulting, constructed on a parody that worked when the piece was made but doesn’t now. Socially awkward, there are times where you can’t help but feel that you’re sat with an audience from one area who are enjoying laughing at the ignorance of the character before us who represents another. Perhaps if the work had more depth or a stronger socio-cultural commentary then the satire would flourish but tonight this feels more Little Britain than the work of British legend.

With a glorious start to the night, Berkoff can and will continue to command a stage for a long time to come. Delighting many with the work he produces, he is a national treasure, but while seminal works such as The Tell Tale Heart may leave us with memories for a lifetime, perhaps its time to put down Dog, leaving it in firmly in the early nineties for good.