A scene from Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, the National Theatre production of which has been filmed and will be shown this weekend, and on Wednesday and Thursday next week, at Umhlanga's Cinema Nouveau. A scene from Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, the National Theatre production of which has been filmed and will be shown this weekend, and on Wednesday and Thursday next week, at Umhlanga's Cinema Nouveau.
Billy Suter
R ATED by London’s Independent as “a superb revival”, and by The Times as having “fabulous, fast-moving direction… with wit and energy it keeps you gasping”, a British production of an acclaimed play reaches Durban this weekend as part of the ongoing National Theatre Live initiative of highlighting filmed stage works.
It’s the National Theatre production of The Kitchen, Arnold Wesker’s extraordinary play, which premiered at the London Royal Court in 1959 and has since been performed in some 30 countries.
The film of the play is scheduled to be presented at Umhlanga’s Cinema Nouveau at Gateway at 7.30pm on Saturday and 2.30pm on Sunday, and again at 7.30pm next Wednesday and at the same time on Thursday.
The setting is 1950s London where, in the kitchen of a big West End restaurant, orders are piling up: a post-war feast of soup, fish, cutlets, omelettes and fruit flans.
Thrown together by their work, chefs, waitresses and porters from across Europe – English, Irish, German and Jewish – argue and flirt as they race to keep up with hundreds of orders.
Peter, 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.
“ 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,” says a spokesman.
Directed by Bijan Sheibani, featuring set designs by Giles Cadel, and with costumes by Moritz Junge, the film of the stage production runs for three hours, including a host introduction and a 20-minute interval.
Coming up next in the current National Theatre Live series is Collaborators, a new play by John Hodge (due in January) and William Shakespeare’s classic about two sets of twins separated at birth, The Comedy Of Errors(due in March).
The National Theatre, founded in 1963, and established on the South Bank of the River Thames in London in 1976, has three theatres – the Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Cottesloe.
It presents an eclectic mix of new plays and classics, with seven or eight productions in repertory at any one time. Actors often appear in more than one play during a season or return to the National regularly.
The National aims constantly to re-energise the great traditions of the British stage and to expand the horizons of audiences and artists alike, and aspires to reflect in its repertoire the diversity of the nation’s culture.