Arnold Wesker: “The
Kitchen”, a play in Two Parts with an Interlude, ed. Faber and Faber, 1956,
London.
“The Kitchen” is a play in two parts with an
interlude. The two parts are developed with a lot of characters moving with
different and hectic actions and keeping a lot of dialogues between them. The dialogues
are perfectly interconnected. We can differentiate the interlude
of the two parts: the interlude is shorter, there less characters and the
actions are more paeceful. (pag.47: “It is afternoon break”).
Arnold Wesker shows us in this play the existing
difficulties in the relationships between the human beings in daily
life, the relationships between a man and a woman, specially through the main
characters, Peter and Monique, who are lovers (pag.38: Peter: “Listen Monique. Tell Monty tonight. Ask for
a divorce, eh? We can’t go on like thieves, we do damage to ourselves, you know
that?”), and the disappointments
and hopes that the characters have in their own lives and
in these relationships, through all of the characters (pag.29: Peter: “Every day, morning to night. What kind of a
life is that, in a kitchen! Is that a life...I’m going to get married and then
whisht-“).
The author shows us the friendships,
loves and enmities of the people which are forgotten as quickly as they
are made. (pag.47: Dimitri: “...You make a friend, you going to be all you life his friend but when
you go from here- pshtt! You forget!...”)
These relationships are developed
through different dialogues kept between the characters in a closed
space, a large kitchen in a restaurant where they
continually go and come.
The kitchen is the
stage where the characters work (during all of the play), enjoy (pag.20: Dimitri turns on the radio, which
plays a loud rock ’n’ roll tune...”), sing (pag.26: Paul: “...(...while Peter sings
loudly)”), laugh
(pag.39: Peter: “...Hya...Hya,hya”), argeu (pag.18: Paul: “All we know is that they
suddenly started shouting at each other...”), fight (pag.20: Dimitri: ...They all wanted to
fight,...”), dream
(pag.49: Peter: “A
dream? It’s the time when you forget what you are and you make what you could
be. When a man dreams- he grows, big, better”; pag.53: Dimitri: “We wiat fir a dream”), gossip (pag.17: Anne: “Ah, the boy’s in love”...; pag.18: Anne: “...But what happened last night? I want to know”),
talk (during all of
the play) and flirt (pag.30: Peter: “...No flirting”; Monique: “I shall talk to who I like”).
The kitchen is where they realte one
with another. They move in a fast and hectic way (from pag.43 to
the end of part one), they always have something to do while they are showing
their uncertainties, their faults and their virtues (pag.17: Raymond: “Sometimes
it’s a good thing to miss a wife”; pag.34: Peter: “...what is there a man can’t get used to? Nothing!
You just forget where you are and you say it’s a job.”).
So, this closed space
together with this fast way of moving in the stage produces certain
nervousness and stress.
In Peter we find all of these
actions: he is boisterous, aggressive and merry. He keeps a dominant and
possessive relationship with Monique (pag.30: Peter: “( Grips her arm No
flirting”), he fights (pag.35: Peter: “...I black his eye not his arse”) and he is sexist (pag.20: Dimitri: “...he want to fight. He got
to show he is a man some way. So-blame him!”)
However we can also see, through
other characters, different ways of understanding the relationships between the
people (pag.19: Daphne: “So if he doesn’t come home tonight I’m going to leave”; pag.26: Paul: “When one of them is prepared to apologize so the
other doesn’t know how to accept- and when someone knows how to accept so the
other...ach! Lunatics!;
pag.31: Nicholas: “I always do and you always say I don’t. That’s a good marriage is it?”).
In my opinion all of the actions up
there named represent the relationships of the daily life of
every spectator or reader. The illusion and the disappointment of
the day to day (pag.47: Raymond: “It’s every day the same”). Peter is disappointed when Monique is incapable of breaking her
marriage to devote herself to him.
The money is an
important aspect for the characters.
The different nationalities
represented through the different characters and their relationships show us
that the disappointments and hopes are the same independently of the country
from where they are.
“The Kitchen” has been a very difficult reading for me. However
I have been surprised in a nice way with the ability of the author to connect,
specially well all of the characters, their actions and their dialogues.