Stephanie Gamarra January 3, 2006

Group: A

The Play,

“The Kitchen”

“The Kitchen” is a play written by the famous playwright Arnold Wesker. This play was first published in 1957.

The most important characters in this play are, Mr. Marango, Peter, Chef, Frank, Gaston, and Alfred. Mr. Marango is a 75 year old man who owns a restaurant and who is very greedy. He has gray hair and has I tired look in his face. He’s a respected man due to the fact that he is the boss. Peter, who is the main character in the play, is a 23 year old German who has been working in Mr. Marango’s restaurant for 3 years and who hates living in a routine. He has an affair with Monique who is married. Chef is a very responsible and organized character. We can also say that he is quite reserved because while everyone starts talking he just listens and keeps on doing his job. Frank is 38 year old man who seems very opened and who likes to flirt around with the female waitresses. During the play we can see that he drinks a lot of alcohol. Also during the play it’s revealed that Frank was once a war prisoner during four long years. Gaston in his forties and during the play we can see that he likes arguing with Peter. Alfred is 65 year old chef who likes doing things himself without the help of anybody and who is quite quiet.

This play talks about the daily life of the waiters, chefs, and porters that work in a restaurant together. Every character is in charge of doing something different. The play is divided in three acts, morning, afternoon and night. In the first act we can see that the characters are busy and stressed out. During the break, Peter and the rest of his colleagues start talking about their lives and their dream. In the third act, Peter gives food to a homeless man. His boss gets very mad and accuses Peter of trying to sabotage him. Also we can’t talk about the plot of this story without mentioning the conflict about Peter and Monique. Monique is married to Monty and who says she would divorce, but doesn’t due so, which makes Peter very mad. Not only is this the problem, but Monique is pregnant with Peter’s child. Apparently this is not the first time that this happens, but Monique is determined to abort.

The play takes place in only one closed place, a kitchen of the restaurant ‘Tivoli’. Therefore the setting is simple, although there’re many specific objects and sections for, pastry and coffee, Poultry, Roast, Fry, Boiled Fish, Fried Fish, Grill, Eggs, Vegetables, dishwashing and for the butcher.

The play takes place in only one day, from morning until dinnertime. The play takes place in the present and the events take place in a chronological order. There are no time ellipses. This play takes place after World War II in England.

The play is written in verse and the language used is simple, although somewhat colloquial. We can add by saying that there were many words which were repeated that had to do with the kitchen (semantic field).

Other aspects that we can add to this analysis are a socio-cultural and economical. Like I said before, this play took during the post-war after World War II so this could’ve influenced the attitude of the characters. We can see this is the scene where all Peter and his colleagues are talking about life in general and about dreams that may never come true. Economically, I think that this play must’ve been very expensive due to the fact that there were many characters, ones that stayed and others that come and go.

In my opinion, this play was not that interesting, due to the fact that there were a lot of discussions about one subject or another. The only part that I liked was when Peter confronted his boss about him giving food to the homeless man, which was very kind of Peter to do so.