The Kitchen

In the steamy atmosphere of a large and in-salubrious West End kitchen, chefs fight, philosophise and finally go berserk, while waitresses pout, dance and have miscarriages. An unlikely vehicle for the ACTT (the cine technicians' union) to choose for their incursion into commercial film-making, but the fact that it was the first play from socialist bright boy Arnold Wesker makes it explicable. Good intentions are perilously flimsy foundations for constructing worthwhile films; Wesker and director Hill (more at home with Elsa the lioness and Worzel Gummidge) fall into the trap of making clichéd pontification on the meaning of life, work, capitalism, the world. A strange mix of utopian whimsicality and rather unlikely melodrama.