Page 32 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes This was all part of the British New Wave—a transposition of the concurrent Nouvelle Vague film
movement in France, some of whose works, such as The 400 Blows of 1959, also emphasized the lives
of the urban proletariat. British filmmakers such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson
channelled their vitriolic anger into film making. Confrontational films such as Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1962) were noteworthy films in the genre.
Later, as many of these writers and directors diversified, kitchen sink realism was taken up by
television. The singe play was then a staple of the medium, and Armchair Theatre (1956-68), produced
by the ITV contractor ABC, The Wednesday Play (1964-70) and Play for Today (1970-84), both BBC
series, contained many works of this kind. Jeremy Sandford’s television play Cathy Come Home or
instance, addressed the then-stigmatized issue of homelessness.

2.2.3 Characteristics of Kitchen Sink Drama

1. 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.
2. 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.

2.2.4 Criticism of Kitchen Sink Drama

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

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