UNIT 4: THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN AND THE KITCHEN-SINK

DRAMA

Post-War years

 Development of the welfare state (1945-1955): creation of the National Health

Service (NHS), free and universal education, housing benefit and
unemployment benefits, etc.
 Sense of despair among the intellectual youth (in the 1950s):
- Changes were not fast or deep enough
- The class system was still too present
- Inequalities held them back from developing their full potential
- Their time was dull and numbing
- Nostalgia for the times before the war

JOHN OSBORNE (1929-1994)

“He idolised his father, a commercial artist and advertising copywriter, but despised
his cockney barmaid mother. He grew up in suburban Surrey and was educated at a
minor public school in Devon, from which he was expelled at the age of 15 for hitting
the headmaster”

 He began his career as an actor and playwright at the age of 18 touring the
country with poor productions
 Look Back in Anger was his eight play
 Based on autobiographical facts

John Osborne.

Most important plays:

 Look Back in Anger (1956)

 The Entertainer (1958)
 Luther (1961)
 Inadmissible Evidence (1964)
 Déjàvu (1991) – a sequel for Look Back in Anger

Look Back in Anger

 A revolution when it was first staged – Seen today, with its misogynistic and
homophobic message and lack of technical innovation, it raised doubts.
  It brought a change to the theatrical tradition of the time: all plays had been
“drawing-room” plays (suburban houses and upper-middle class) – The setting
is a stark attic room.
 Accurate description of a young state-educated generation that had no patience
for the previous generation.
 As the play opens on a Sunday afternoon, we see Jimmy and Cliff reading the
Sunday papers and Alison ironing – Jimmy and Alison are married, Cliff is a
friend.
 Gender war and the class war as one and the same thing – women represent the
establishment the upper class, and heterosexual men are the representatives of
the working class.
 Jimmy is an angry young man, who feels that there are no epic causes to fight
for.
 His spite against society seems to stem from a perceived lack of feeling – “I
want to make people feel, to give them lessons in feeling” (Declaration 1957)
 Jimmy’s tirades occupy most of the speech (the author described them as
“arias”)
 Eloquence as one of Osborne’s innovations: no fear of offending – one of the
aims of the plays is to provoke an emotional response in the audience
 It reaffirmed the relevance of the playwright in British theatre.

ARNOLS WESKER (1932-2016)

 Initially lumped in with the “angry young men” but neither his theatre nor his
personality fitted that description.
 He came from a working-class Jewish family in London.
 His family is reflected in the family of the Trilogy.
 “Kitchen-sink drama” – setting was the atmosphere of the working-class home
depicted in an extreme naturalistic style.
 In common with Osborne – realism and lack of innovative techniques on the
one hand, and overt ideology on the other.
 Differences: Wesker’s political activism and he put women centre stage
(intelligent, committed, empathetic and independent women)

Most important plays:

- The Kitchen (1957)

- The Trilogy: Chicken Soup with Barley (1958)

Roots (1959)

I’m Talking about Jerusalem (1960)

- Chips with Everything (1962)

 - Their Very Own and Golden City (1966)
- The Friends (1970)
- The Journalists (1972)
- The Merchant (1976)
- Letter To A Daughter (1990)
- The Confession (1993)
- Break, My Heart (1997)
- Joy and Tyranny (2011)

Chicken Soup with Barley:

 Jewish family in the East End from 1936 to 1956ç

 Three photographs at decade-long intervals:
- 1936, Spanish Civil War and its reflection in the London riots between
socialists and Blackshirts.
- 1946, Labour Party in government and beginning of the welfare state.
- 1956, Russian invasion of Hungary.
 The historical events intertwine with the lives of the characters and influence
the plot and structure of the play – they happen offstage.
 The Kahn family: Sarah, Harry and their children, Ada and Ronald(Roland, an
anagram of Arnold, i.e., the playwright himself)
 Roland links the three plays in the Trilogy.
 The play presents political disenchantment – Sarah is the only one who will
maintain her idealism to the end.

Roots:

 Set three years after the last act of Chicken Soup with Barley.
 The protagonist is Beatie, a young woman from Norfolk, engaged to Ronnie
Kahn (never appears on stage)
 At the beginning she repeats Ronni’s discourse to try to awake her family’s
political conscience.
 At the end, she finds her own voice.
 Extreme naturalism of the setting: the action takes place while cooking and the
various domestic chores are performed.
 The play is symbolic: Beatie represents the working class.

I’m talking about Jerusalem

 It spans from the second act of Chicken Soup with Barley to the end of Roots
  Ada Kahn and Dave, from Chicken Soup with Barley, decide to set up their
own farm in Norfolk.
 An attempt to become rural socialists, back to their roots.

SHELAGH DELANEY (1938-2011)

 Described at the time as an “angry young woman”, the only woman playwright
of this movement – she hated to be considered Osborne’s female counterpart.
 One of the most important representatives of the “kitchen-sink drama”
 Her only success, A Taste of Honey, was written when she was nineteen
 Joan Littlewood’s direction at the Theatre Workshop was fundamental
 Influenced by Becket’s Waiting for Godot
 “The odd one out, not because she’s working class, less educated or less
talented – but because she’s a woman. A roomful of men and one very young
woman” (Jeanette Winterson)

A taste of Honey

- A reaction to the conservative handling of sexual matters in the

‘drawing rooms’ dramas of the time
- It deals with issues such as sexuality, homosexuality, teenage
pregnancy, racism, single motherhood, alcoholism, and even
prostitution
- The style is extreme naturalism – without technical innovations
- The issues and the protagonists (two working-class women) were the
real innovations
- No sentimentally; sense of humour and an incomprehensible hope for a
better future.