Arnold Wesker - Böcker

The original version of Wesker's imaginiative reworking of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. With notes and commentary by Glenda Leeming.

This first volume of Wesker's Collected Plays contains the Wesker Trilogy - 'A trilogy which will act as a monument to its era' Daily Mail This trilogy of plays was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in the 60s and concern Wesker's own background, growing up in a Jewish family in the 30s in the East End of London. 'The action of the trilogy takes place between the middle thirties and the late fifties and has as its background three wars - the Spanish Civil, the Second World, and the Cold. Its purpose is to show the ways in which these huge disturbances impinge on a Jewish working-class household, altering their habits of work and thought, and thus determining the course of their lives. The theme is a vast one and Mr Wesker is splendidly equipped to handle it. Like many Jewish writers, he thinks internationally, yet feels domestically; and it is this combination of attributes that enables him to bring gigantic events and ordinary people into the same sharp focus' (Kenneth Tynan, Observer) 'A trilogy which will act as a monument to its era' (Daily Mail)"The passion of Mr Wesker's theme is matched by the living fire in his writing ...its quality is undiminished by the passing years" Bernard Levin"The theme is a vast one and Mr Wesker is splendidly equipped to handle it.Like many Jewish writers, he thinks internationally, yet feels domestically; and it is this combination of attributes that enables him to bring gigantic events and ordinary people into the same sharp focus" Kenneth Tynan, Observer

This second volume of Wesker's Collected Plays contains his One-Woman Plays: "Wesker is that rarity, a playwright who writes good, gritty parts for women" (Time Out) Yardsdale and Whatever Happened to Betty Lemon?: 'From his earliest plays, Wesker has always delineated women with understanding and sympathy. Both these qualities are present here ...each character convinces one equally of the depth of her suffering and of the resilience of her spirit' Sunday Telegraph; The Mistress: 'Women as victims ...traditional Wesker themes ...wrapped up marvellously here and re-presented ...a fascinating evening in the theatre' Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4; Letter to a Daughter: 'Wesker breaks new ground ...a moving depiction of a doubt-ridden single mother ...a finely crafted piece of theatre' Jewish Chronicle; Annie Wobbler: 'All three different characters are shown with an intensity of personal involvement which is where Wesker flourishes best' Sunday Telegraph; Four Portraits - of Mothers with Yardsdale won the GBP10,000 Georges Bresson prize."Arnold Wesker - the unique outsider in the British theatre" Observer

Five outstanding plays from the British theatre of the 1960s. This volume contains major works by five of the most important playwrights ot emerge during the late fifties and early sixties. Bold, challenging and iconoclastic, these plays are landmarks of post-war British theatre. Roots by Arnold Wesker focuses on the homecoming of young Beatie Bryant who returns to her family of Norfolk farm workers with stories of her boyfriend Ronnie. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance by John Arden is set in a mining town in the 19th century, with a group of soldiers returned from a colonial war. But when Musgrave is asked to keep the peace with the colliery workers, he decides to do so in a rather unusual way. Loot by Joe Orton is a brilliant parody of the skeleton-in-the-cupboard crime genre, exploding the very notions of English decency, good citizenry and traditional 'positions'. Edward Bond's Early Morning re-imagines the time of Victoria and Albert caught up in a military coup plotted by Disraeli.Peter Barnes' Ruling Class describes the fall out in an aristocratic family after the 14th Earl commits suicide and leaves his estate to a schizophrenic Franciscan friar who is under the illusion that he is Jesus.

The kettle boils in 1936 as the fascists are marching. Tea is brewed in 1946, with disillusion in the air at the end of the war. Twenty years on, in 1956, as rumours spread of Hungarian revolution, the cup is empty.Sarah Khan, an East End Jewish mother, is a feisty political fighter and a staunch communist. Battling against the State and her shirking husband, she desperately tries to keep her family together.This landmark state-of-the-nation play is a panoramic drama portraying the age-old battle between realism and idealism. Chicken Soup with Barley captures the collapse of an ideology alongside the disintegration of a family. Chicken Soup with Barley, the first in a trilogy that includes Roots and I'm Talking about Jerusalem was first performed at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry in 1958 and transferred to the Royal Court in the same year.

It's 1958. Beatie Bryant has been to London and fallen in love with Ronnie, a young socialist. As she anxiously awaits his arrival to meet her family at their Norfolk farm, her head is swimming with new ideas. Ideas of a bolder, freer world which promise to clash with their rural way of life.Roots is the remarkable centrepiece of Wesker's seminal post-war trilogy. It was first performed in 1959 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, before transferring to the Royal Court. It is the second play in a trilogy comprising Chicken Soup with Barley and I'm Talking About Jerusalem. It went on to transfer to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End.A true classic, Roots is an affecting portrait of a young woman finding her voice at a time of unprecedented social change. This Modern Classic edition features an introduction by Glenda Leeming.

TEach play grapples with the timeless problems accompanying two people in love. The most intimate and personal of relationships are placed under uncompromising scrutiny. Bold, elemental and structurally satisfying, The Four Seasons (1964) depicts the ebb and flow of a couple's relationship, its power games and its politics, over the course of its year-long life. In Love Letters on Blue Paper (1977) we witness the late-blooming love of a woman for her dying husband in a drama of memory and companionship. Playful, witty and continualy surprising, Lady Othello (1987) gets right to the heart of an urgent, all-consuming, passionate affair.

"Arnold Wesker's plays, written over a period of more than fifty years, offer actors, male and female, a remarkable source of monologues covering themes such as friendship, death, old age, political disillusion, failed love, and self-discovery fuelled by emotions ranging through anger, joy, hope, fear, outrage, love, bewilderment, guilt, and comic irony. This is Wesker's own selection of them. In addition to definitive versions of famous monologues such as Paul's speech from The Kitchen and Beatie Bryant's triumphant speech from the end of Roots, this volume constitutes an introduction to an unknown Wesker. To those already familiar with The Wesker Trilogy and other plays, this volume contains further evidence of this author's power and passion.The volume also includes synopses of the plays from which the monologues come."

"Includes the plays The Kitchen, The Rocking Horse Kid, Denial and When God Wanted a Son This volume of Oberon Books' Wesker series includes the author's most performed work The Kitchen (1957) produced in sixty cities from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, from Paris to Moscow, from Montreal to Zurich. This volume also contains Wesker's latest play The Rocking Horse Kid, about a black boy who wants to go round the world on a horse; the magical play for children Voices on the Wind and one of his most controversial plays Denial about 'the false memory syndrome' declared by an irate French critic of the Paris production '...a dangerous play. Wesker is a dangerous playwright.' He has also been described as 'a melancholy optimist' as evidenced by another of the plays in this volume When God Wanted a Son which explores the possibility that anti-Semitism like stupidity is in the bloodstream of human nature and here to stay. Few playwrights dare be as politically incorrect as Wesker."

"Includes the plays Chips With Everything, Their Very Own and Golden City, The Journalists, Badenheim 1939 and, published here for the first time, Phoenix Phoenix, Burning Bright. Described variously as 'a dangerous playwright, 'a melancholy optimist', and 'the unique outsider in the British Theatre', Arnold Wesker is one of Britain's most celebrated playwrights. This latest volume in Oberon Books' Wesker series brings together five of his political plays. It features some of his best-known works including Chips With Everything, perhaps the most celebrated of his plays, and about which Harold Hobson, writing in The Sunday Times in 1961, said 'this is the first play of which the Establishment need be afraid.' "

Mattie Beancourt, a 61- year-old woman, reads the autobiography of Mark Gorman, a famous painter. Having grown up in the same East End streets she writes to him. A correspondence develops.She visits him unannounced, and discovers he lives in near poverty and neglect. Her personality is sunny, his is curmudgeonly. Their impact upon each other is startling.…I was an appendage for him. Something stuck on, but not special. He didn’t need me. There was never any real passion there. To live a whole life knowing you were not special for anyone…craving it… to be loved and special. Just once in my life, before I die…

Arnold Wesker's perennially popular play The Kitchen will be revived at the National Theatre in October 2011.Set in the basement kitchen of a large restaurant, thirty chefs, waitresses, and kitchen porters, slowly begin the day preparing to serve lunch. The central story tells of a frustrated love affair between a high-spirited, young, German chef, Peter, and a married English waitress, Monique.

‘My preoccupation,’ says Arnold Wesker in his interview/portrait Ambivalences (published by Oberon Books) ‘with-violence-stemming from-perceived-intimidation-by-the-bright-ones who dare to be cleve ror simply different, began with an incident at school. While queuing for a school meal, one of the other boys wanted me to try his liquorice stick .I didn’t want to. This other pupil insisted. I continued to decline. I didn’tlike liquorice! That I didn’t want to share what he liked, what he thought was good, enraged the other boy who couldn’t bear my indifference to his taste, and he hit me. I’ve never lost this image of violence induced by the outsider, the one who dissents, the one who doesn’t share in what others like or believe. One day’, Wesker vowed, ‘I may write a play beginning with that image – of the boy who wants another boy to share his taste in liquorice and hits him because he doesn’t. It’ll be an exploration of the nature of violence.’In late 2010 he wrote just such a play, Joy and Tyranny, but the playwright doesn’t describe it as a play, rather as: Arias and variations on the theme of violence. In fact it is a patchwork quilt knitting together many extracts from other of his works, as though throughout his career he was infusing those works, ghost-like, with a hidden play waiting the right time to emerge.

In The Wedding Feast an idealistic, altruistic shoe manufacturer arrives at an employee’s wedding, with disastrous consequences. One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round features a comic plot involving academics who get high on a hash birthday cake, a recalcitrant daughter, and the appearance of an illegitimate son who is a magician. In Groupie 61-year-old Mattie Beancourt is shocked to discover her idol, the famous painter Mark Gorman, living alone in near poverty. She is sunny, he is curmudgeonly and the impact of their friendship is startling. Set against a scene of defiant old age, The Old Ones examines the eccentric rituals of old age and plays out the conflict between the optimistic and pessimistic spirit.

Ambivalences: A Portrait of Arnold Wesker from A to W is a document of Arnold Wesker in conversation with the Italian academic Chiara Montenero. In their wide-ranging discussions, Wesker and Montenero address his ideas on art and drama with a particular focus on some of his most enduring characters. Betraying his reputation as theatre’s ‘perennial outsider’, Ambivalences finds Wesker in generous and engaging form, offering a rich and unique insight into the mind of one of the key figures in 20th-century drama.

Presented here are four epic history plays from Sir Arnold Wesker, which touch on the age-old conflicts caused by religion, science and the Establishment.Set in the Jewish ghetto of Venice, 1563, Shylock (1972) is based on the same three stories from which Shakespeare wove his play, The Merchant of Venice. The core plot remains, but the relationships and characterisations are very different. Caritas (1980) is at once the story of a monastic young woman in the fourteenth century but also a metaphor for the wrong decisions which can imprison us for life. In 1144 a young boy was found brutally murdered in Thorpe Wood. The Jews were accused of slaughtering a Christian child touse his blood for Passover and mock the crucifixion. Blood Libel (1991) investigates a calumny which persists to this day. Meanwhile Longitude (2002) tells of the eighteenth-century race to accurately measure longitude – and claim a £20,000 reward from Parliament.