Rules of
the Drama
Epitaph for George Dillon
John Osborne &
Anthony Creighton
The Kitchen
The Hamlet of Stepney Green
Bernard Kops
Penguin Plays, 1964
The Epitaph
A very
comprehensive play with a characteristic way of writing in pools of
thought, glimmering surface and muddy depths in which the fish are seen
swimmimg, or greatly imprecise and all-encompassing as the Ruth theme
("far-away left" politics and Brown Windsor patronage) contrasted
with Mr Barney Evans of the theatrical profession ("you've got to be
ruthless").
The latter's
successful plays chart the course of Epitaph for George Dillon. George's
epitaph figures in My Skin Is My Enemy, Josie is the Slasher Girl,
Mr Colwyn-Stuart the religionist adds up to I Was a Drug Fiend (faith
and works), finally Telephone Tart is George the would-be artiste, waiting
for his call.
The Kitchen Sink
Arnold Wesker wrote the play that gave the name in certain minds
to A Taste of Honey (Delaney's or Richardson's) and suchlike creations,
it's a play about a restaurant that turns out hot food in large quantities at a
rate beyond the competence of any good cook and illustrates forcefully what is
to be sought in this money-minded factory of debilitating art, like the
souvenir-makers in The Lavender Hill Mob or G.B.S. on the repertory
actor of yore.
Such an argument
extends to criticism as well. Obviously, churning out the stuff every day
leaves some critics unable to see the forest for the trees, the play for the
set design, English poetry for the Fleshly School (or the Satanic) and that
sort of thing, The Kitchen for the kitchen sink.
Breton had the
Fauves in mind, certainly, when he wrote his manifesto.
The Prince of Herrings
The joke always
goes like this. Such a nice young rabbi! With a trade to fall back on! Why
isn't he married?
Hamlet marries Ophelia
instead of Teddy-Boying toward mass murder, and the joke isn't on Shakespeare
but on Teddy Boys.
This real theme,
which runs throughout the three plays (London, 1958-59), is intricately woven
in Epitaph for George Dillon, violently expressed in The Kitchen,
and treated as open burlesque in The Hamlet of Stepney Green. The sturdy
hand of the artist puts together something worth having, Hava Segal is a lovely
girl, David Levy is a nice young Jewish man gone mad to be a crooner. His
father Sam the pickled-herring merchant dies in the garden bemoaning his life
and his wife, misunderstood he returns to avert a catastrophe.