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History of English Literature
Notes husband and wife, parent and child, between siblings and with the wider community. The family
may also pull together in unity against outer forces that range from the rent-collector to rival
families.
Example
Look Back in Anger
A Taste of Honey
The Glass Menagerie
31.3.1 Discussion
Kitchen sink dramas can be rather dismal and unrelentingly negative, so what is their value?
Perhaps they may resonate with us as they remind us of our own humdrum lives. Perhaps they
will wake us up and prod us to get out of the rut and see a wider world. Maybe they will make us
grateful that we do not have to live in such social squalor.
Kitchen sink dramas may also framed as ‘serious art’, intending to impress rather than entertain.
They may capture social setting for posterity and gain admiration in later days by students of
history. They may even be a cathartic act by their authors, expunging the traumas of a deprived
childhood.
This is a genre in which the British seem to specialize. Americans prefer their soaps and dramas to
be a bit less dismal. There was in particularly a group of ‘angry young men’ in the 1960s UK
playwright scene that specialised in such plays.
31.3.2 Perspectives and Criticism
The 1950’s through the 1970’s saw the rise of one of the most important movements in modern
British theater: the Kitchen Sink drama. These types of plays had several characteristics that
distinguished them as a break from the forms of theater before them. They can be compared
against theatrical movements such as Avant Garde Theater, or the theater of the absurd, characterized
by the plays of authors such as Samuel Beckett.
Perhaps the first, and most notable, characteristic of these Kitchen Sink dramas was the way in
which they advanced a particular social message or ideology. This ideology was most often leftist.
The settings were almost always working class. The previous trend in Victorian theater had been
to depict the lives of the wealthy members of the ruling classes. These classes of people were often
conservative in their politics and their ideologies. This was not the case for Kitchen Sink Theater.
The Kitchen Sink drama sought, instead, to bring the real lives and social inequality of ordinary
working class people to the stage. The lives of these people were caught between struggles of
power, industry, politics, and social homogenization.
Another chief characteristic of the Kitchen Sink drama was the way in which its characters expressed
their unvarnished emotion and dissatisfaction with the ruling class status quo. This can be seen
clearly in the play considered to be the standard bearer of this Kitchen Sink genre: John Osborne’s
Look Back in Anger. In Osborne’s play, Jimmy Porter plays the role of the Angry Young Man. He
is angry and dissatisfied at a world that offers him no social opportunities and a dearth of emotion.
He longs to live a “real life.” He feels, however, that the trappings of working class domesticity
keep him from reaching this better existence. His anger and rage are thus channeled towards those
around him. Osborne’s play is a study in how this pent up frustration and social anger can wreak
havoc on the ordinary lives of the British people.
Some critics have noted the irony in the term “Kitchen Sink drama.” The domestic world during
this time was believed to be the domain of the feminine. Almost all of the major Kitchen Sink
works which take place in the mid-twentieth century, however, are centered around a masculine
point of view. These plays rarely centered around the emotions and tribulations of its women
characters. The power dynamic between male and female often assumed to be masculine and is an
unexamined critical component in many of these plays. Women are often assumed to serve the
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