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

and made the kitchen the center of familial and social life. In the case of the Porter’s attic apartment, Notes
the kitchen and living spaces were all one room on the stage. 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.

2.2.5 Examples of Kitchen Sink Drama

English social realist movies, kitchen sink dramas (a term derived from a painting by John Bratby),
the angry young men—whatever you want to call them, you can’t deny the power that a brace of
plays, books and films produced in the 50s and 60s continues to exert to this very day. Certainly, the
influence of movies like A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving,
Look Back in Anger and Billy Liar can be seen in everything from the music of Morrissey to the kind
of dialogue you see in Coronation Street, Britain’s longest running and arguably most popular
soap.
A Taste of Honey

Adapted from a landmark play written by 18 year old Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey has stood
the test of time better than many of its contemporaries. With a plotline that has been pillaged and
plagiarised by just about every soap ever (young neglected girl finds love in the arms of a stranger
and is left holding the baby), the movie is characterised by a clutch of terrific performances. Music
fans may also care to note that A Taste of Honey featured the first solo work by then young Beatle,
Paul McCartney, as well as a whole host of lines later stolen virtually wholesale by Morrissey.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Adapted from his own book by Alan Silitoe and directed by Tony Richardson, a key figure in the
British Social Realist movement who would later go on to direct John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger
to great acclaim, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is an exemplar in kitchen sink drama:
there is a central sympathetic, albeit mildly ambiguous, central character played by Tom Courtnenay;
a bruising, uncomfortable home life; petty crime; redemption offered in the form of a love that
doesn’t work out; and, finally, cathartically, a conclusion that leaves our awkward protagonist where
he feels he needs to be. Beautifully shot, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a stone
classic.

A Kind of Loving
As kitchen sink as kitchen sink drama ever got, A Kind of Loving follows the fortunes of Vic Brown
(played in perfect dour Northern bloke fashion by Alan Bates) as he takes up with a typist Ingrid
(played with a sort of wounded chagrin by June Ritchie) in the factory where he works as a draftsmen.
There is an unsatisfactory one-night stand that leaves him wanting no more to do with her—until
he learns she is pregnant and ‘does the right thing’. Which is where Ingrid’s mother Mrs Rothwell
(a vengeful and mean-spirited Thora Hird) comes in, piling misery on top of misery until Vic and
Ingrid agree to make do with the eponymous ‘kind of loving’. As with Saturday Night Sunday
Morning, A Kind of Loving is all about reflecting life as it truly was—and a marvellous job it does.
Up the Junction
Unlike the great majority of social realist movies (your Taste of Honey, Saturday Night Sunday
Morning, Billy Liar, A Kind of Loving etc), Up the Junction is based in London—in Clapham to be

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