The Kitchen

Synopsis

Set in 1950s London, The Kitchen is set in an enormous West End restaurant, the orders are piling up: a post-war feast of soup, fish, cutlets, omelettes and fruit flans.

In The Kitchen the staff are thrown together by their work, chefs, waitresses and porters from across Europe – English, Irish, German, Jewish – argue and flirt as they race to keep up. Peter (Tom Brooke), a high-spirited young cook, seems to thrive on the pressure. In between preparing dishes, he manages to strike up an affair with married waitress Monique, the whole time dreaming of a better life. But in the all-consuming clamour of the kitchen, nothing is far from the brink of collapse.

Arnold Wesker’s extraordinary play, The Kitchen, premiered at the Royal Court in 1959 and has since been performed in over 30 countries. The Kitchen puts the workplace centre stage in a blackly funny and furious examination of life lived at breakneck speed, when work threatens to define who we are!

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Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 8 September 2011

Following the fine Royal Court revival of Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup With Barley, the National presents another of the playwright’s famous early plays, The Kitchen, which the Court re-visited in Stephen Daldry’s coruscating, immersive production in 1994.

The highest compliment I can pay Bijan Sheibani is that his new NT production, part of the Travelex £12 tickets scheme, and superbly designed and costumed by Giles Cadle and Moritz Junge, is every bit as good as Daldry’s, just as brilliantly choreographed.

And maybe it’s a touch more cosmopolitan, and not just because the riotous ritual is interspersed with frozen tableaux and blasts of wheezy Russian music.

The shape of this play – which premiered in Sloane Square 1959 and came to full stage fruition there in 1961, directed by John Dexter – is everything: the staff assembles in the early morning an...

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Latest User Review

chris bulford - 5 November 2011:

One of the poorest productions I have seen at the NT; and I have seen many. Contrived, self regarding, action for the sake of it, some of the acting is abysmal and altogether getting carried away with itself based within a very good set. And don't get me started on the acoustics. There were too many empty seats after the interval. I'm afraid someone has to say the king has no clothes. Absolutely no comparison with the excellent Chicken Soup with Barley at the Royal Court....

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