Page 238 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 31: Black Comedy, Angry Young Men and Kitchen Sink Drama

men of their household and, when conflicts do arise, it is often the man who is portrayed as the Notes
suffering protagonist.

Did u know? Women’s suffering is always a result of the suffering of the male.
Though Kitchen Sink dramas gained notoriety in twentieth century British culture for their
unflinching anger and criticism directed towards the social, political, and economic establishment,
the plays were also significant for the way they depicted the most intimate aspects of domestic life.
This was in stark contrast to popular classical or Victorian dramas and comedies which largely
centered around the public lives of socially established characters. Before the Kitchen Sink dramas,
commentators have noted that in the mid-twentieth century, British theater still produced plays as
if it were the nineteenth century. The Kitchen Sink drama, in contrast, moved the action and
emotion of the theater from depictions of the public space of people’s lives into the most intimate
of settings. The kitchen was considered to be the realm of the domestic, of females and servants,
and Victorian drama often excluded any mention of it. Kitchen Sink dramas, however, turned this
notion around and made the kitchen the center of familial and social life. In the case of the Porter’s
attic apartment, the kitchen and living spaces were all one room on the stage.

Notes The boundaries of intimate domestic life and public life were blurred and created a
realism not seen before in British theater.
Whether social or domestic, the Kitchen Sink drama changed the trajectory of British theater.
Though many of the authors considered to have written in this genre such as Osborne, Arnold
Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, and John Arden never claimed the title of Kitchen Sink dramatist, these
authors’s plays contained themes of common life that deeply resonated with British culture of the
period. These types of plays signaled a resolute shift of British theater into the 20th century.

31.4 Summary
Black humor (from the French humour noir) is a term coined by Surrealist theoretician
André Breton in 1935, to designate a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter
arises from cynicism and skepticism, often about the topic of death.
The term Angry Young Men often applied to the British ‘kitchen sink’ playwrights of the 1950s
and also anyone, particularly young men obviously, who rails against the establishment.
Angry Young Men were various British novelists and playwrights who emerged in the
1950s and expressed scorn and disaffection with the established sociopolitical order of
their country.
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.
Though Kitchen Sink dramas gained notoriety in twentieth century British culture for their
unflinching anger and criticism directed towards the social, political, and economic estab-
lishment, the plays were also significant for the way they depicted the most intimate
aspects of domestic life.

31.5 Keywords
Kitchen Sink Drama : The kitchen-sink drama is placed in an ordinary domestic setting
and typically tells a relatively mundane family story.
Black Comedy : A form of comedy in which serious issues such as cannibalism,
rape, genocide, terminal illness, etc., are treated humorously.
Often more disturbing than funny.
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