The Kitchen

Author: Arnold Wesker

Title: “The Kitchen”

Editorial: Faber and Faber

Year and place of publication: on 13 September 1959 in London

Dramatis Personae:

    In total are thirty characters, chefs, waitresses, and kitchen porters. Frank, Alfredo, Hans, Meter, Kevin, Gaston, Michael, Bertha, Mangolis, Anne, Max, Nicholas, Raymond, Paul, Chef, Mr. Marango, Dimitri, Monique, Daphne, Molly, Gwen, Cynthia, Violet, Hettle, Jackie, Betty, Magi, Winnie and a tramp. It has to emphasize in:

   - Peter: the main character, he is a young German twenty-three years old, who has worked at the Tivoli fro the last three years. He is boisterous, aggressive, too merry, and yet good nature. He is the Monique’s lover.

   - Monique: the Peter’s woman falls in love, she is married.

   - Kevin: the new young Irish man, who has arrived at the Tivoli, he is twenty – two years old. He is rushed with so much work.

   -Chef: a large man with tiny moustache and fifty-nine years old, he undertakes to carry on a good way the kitchen. He rarely speaks to anyone except Frank, the second chef, Max who works near him, and Nicholas, who is immediately under him.

   - Marango: Tivoli’s proprietor, he is an old man of seventy-five years old, with flabby jowls and a sad expression on his face. He lives in the restaurant, which is his life. He thinks that gives his workers the best never will see.

Plot:

   In Tivoli’s kitchen there are much work for do it, ones enter while others exit, who are in the

kitchen is talking about the fight amongst Peter and Gaston. Kevin and Violet, who are new in Tivoli, arrive and they sys them what to do. Kevin will work with Peter, who has come in yet.

   In the lunch hour, every people eat except Gaston because he does not want to sit with Peter. This has discussed with Monique about her marriage. Requests begins to come in, every people are ready for the work. It do not stop to enter plates for doing, Kevin is exhaust never had had so much work, they had not stop since a long while, the rest see that normal.

   Peter and Monique continue discussing about her marriage whose she must leave for being with Peter, but she do not leave it because she is afraid of her husband. Peter goes berserk and pursues Violet round the restaurant, which does not have the blame of problem with Monique, because she had not to mind him and she had said him “bloody German”. He reaches a chopper and breaks some things, while others chefs try to hold him. Marango and the Chef do not understand why someone like Peter has done that, at the end Peter will be dismissed.  

Space and time:

   Play happens inside the Tivoli’s kitchen and time used is present.

Recourse:

   Wesker has used many characters; in one place that represent the world, the kitchen. Where we can see relationships between different personages, how they live their live. In addition, he has used repetitions, rhetoric questions…

Opinion:

  It has been a play that I like much. It reflect reality, difficulties in persons life, monotony,  a work that many times do not recompense too, and less if one do not feel comfortable, complexity of  relationships. How life passes, and how one passes it working without more sense.