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Unit 2: Literary Terms: Problem Play, Kitchen Sink Drama, and Angry Young Man

Discussion Notes
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. May be 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.

2.2.2 Origin of the Term Kitchen Sink Drama

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.
In UK, the term “kitchen sink” derived from an expressionist painting by John Bratby, which
contained an image of a kitchen sink. Bratby painted several kitchen subjects, often turning practical
utensils such as sieves and spoons into semi-abstract shapes. He also painted bathrooms, and made
three paintings of toilets. The term was then applied to a then-emerging style of drama, which
favoured a more realistic representation of working class life. The term was adopted in the United
States to refer to the live television dramas of the 1950s by Paddy Chayefsky and others. As Chayefsky
put it, this “drama of introspection” explored “the marvelous world of the ordinary.”

The critic David Sylvester wrote an article in 1954 about trends in recent English
art, calling his article “The Kitchen Sink” in reference to Bratby’s picture.

Before the 1950s, the United Kingdom’s working class were often depicted stereotypically in Noel
Coward’s Drawing room comedies and British films. It was also seen as being in opposition to the
‘well-made play’, the kind which theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once denounced as being set in
‘Loamshire’, of dramatists like Terence Rattigan. The works of the ‘kitchen sink’ were created with
the intention of changing all this. Their political views were initially labeled as radical, sometimes
even anarchic.
John Osborne’s play Look Back In Anger (1956) showed Angry Young Men not totally dissimilar to
the film and theatre directors of the movement; the hero is a graduate, but working in a manual
occupation. It dealt with social alienation, the claustrophobia and frustrations of a provincial life on
low incomes.
The impact of this work inspired Arnold Wesker and Shelagh Delaney, among numerous others, to
write plays of their own. The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, headed by George
Devine, and Theatre Workshop organised by Joan Littlewood were particularly prominent in
bringing these plays to the public’s attention. Critic John Heilpern wrote that Look Back in Anger
expressed such “immensity of feeling and class hatred” that it altered the course of English theater.

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