ENGLISH THEATRE OF XIX AND XX CENTURIES GROUP A
SURNAME: Giarratana NAME:
Melania
ARNOLD WESKER
THE KITCHEN
A Play in Two Parts
with an Interlude
Royal Court Theatre, 13 September 1959, UK
The cast of the play
is made up of thirty characters; the main one is Peter, a German twenty-three
years old boy in love with Monique. All the characters work in a restaurant
kitchen and the entire play is set there. Each character has his rules in the
kitchen; Peter boils the fish and Monique is a hostess. Peter is a nervous
person and his laugh is very strange because as it always seems forced. Monique
is a married woman who promises to leave her husband but never does it. Peter
is very jealous of Monique because she likes to flirt with other men.
The play presents a
typical working day of these thirty people; each one is in there corner doing
there work and talking about the latest news: Peter fought with Gaston, another
work-mate, the night before. Working in that kitchen is quite hard for
everybody, there is not time either to breath and each of them reacts
nervously. At the end of the first part the kitchen is
full of waitress passing by quickly. The interlude begins in the afternoon,
when everybody is taking a break before starting again for the evening, just
two guys, Paul and Raymond are the last working in their corners; this is the
moment in which they have more time to talk and to express their ideas. Peter
talks about his dreams and his disappointment about the life he is living. This
break gives us the chance to understand how the lives of these persons are hard,
how frustrating it is to do a job just because you need money and you are not
allowed to dream, because you belong to the working class. In the second part
they start working again, it is nearly six in the afternoon, Peter presents
Monique with a necklace for her birthday and tell her that he loves her and ask
her if she has told her husband about them; Monique doesn’t answer and
changes the conversation, she just says that her husband is going to buy a
house for her. In the meanwhile Violet, a waitress, interrupts them many time
and Peter gets so angry that he starts breaking all the dishes and hurting
himself, till he falls down. Everybody tries to help him but the owner of the
restaurant seems only to be worried about his stuck kitchen.
The language used by
the character is typical of humble working class people, full of slang and bad
words. It’s obvious that they use the words
strictly connected to the place they work in: the kitchen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold Wesker “The kitchen”
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Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
López
© Melania Giarratana
megia@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia
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