In collaboration with the British Embassy & the British Council in Athens
1950s London. In the kitchen of an enormous West End restaurant, the orders are piling up: a post-war feast of soup, fish, cutlets, omelettes and fruit flans.
Fifteen hundred customers an’ half of them eating fish. I had to start work on a Friday.
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, 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: The Kitchen
Arnold Wesker’s extraordinary play 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.
Production credits:
Director: Bijan Sheibani
Set Designer: Giles Cadle
Costume Designer: Moritz Junge
Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson
Music: Dan Jones
Cast credits:
Frank: Neal Barry
Peter: Tom Brooke
Max: Ian Burfield
Betty: Rebecca Davies
Gaston: Stavros Demetraki
Nicholas: Craige Els
Gwen: Ruth Gibson
Tramp: Colin Haigh
Hettie: Rendah Heywood
Molly: Rebecca Humphries
Maggi: Tendayi Jembere
Bertha: Tricia Kelly
Kevin: Rory Keenan
Chef: Paul McClearey
Anne: Siobhán McSweeney
Raymondo: Gerard Monaco
Winnie: Sarah Mowat
Alfredo: Vincenzo Nicoli
Michael: Luke Norris
Hans: Marek Oravec
Mangolis: Hambi Pappas
Cynthia: Jessica Regan
Paul: Samuel Roukin
Head Waiter: Tim Samuels
Dimitri: Sam Swann
Jackie: Sarah Sweeney
Daphne: Stephanie Thomas
Violet: Rosie Thomson
