Edited by leading scholars in the field and with contributions from important scholars of postwar theater, this volume considers, for the first time, the whole body of Wesker’s work. It includes chapters on Wesker’s reception in Europe, his representation of and attitude towards women, his relationship to his Jewish origins and identity, and his attitude toward politics and community. Building on existing scholarship, drawing extensively from the Arnold Wesker archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and introducing new insights and perspectives, this important new essay collection remedies the recent critical neglect of the dramatist.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction
Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders
Prologue: ‘It Matters’
Edward Bond
PART 1: EARLY VISIONS
1. Radical Chic? Centre 42, the Roundhouse and How Culture Countered Wesker in the 1960s
Lawrence Black
2. Introducing Mr Harold Wesker
Graham Saunders
3. Roots: A Political Poem
James Macdonald
4. The Enigma That Is Pip: A Character under Construction in Wesker’s Chips with Everything
John Bull
5. Wesker’s Flawed Diamond: Their Very Own and Golden City
Chris Megson
PART 2: UNIFYING FRAGMENTS
6. ‘Let Battle Commence!’: The Wesker Controversies
Harry Derbyshire
7. Representing Jewishness and Antisemitism in Arnold Wesker’s Work: Shylock, Badenheim 1939 and Blood Libel
Sue Vice
8. Wesker’s French Connections
Anne Etienne
9. Wesker the Visual Artist – ‘Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life!’
Pamela Howard
10. A Charming Rogue: Wesker’s Relationship with Women – and with Himself
Michael Fry
11. The Idea of Community in the Plays of Arnold Wesker from The Kitchen to Beorhtel’s Hill
Robert Wilcher
Notes on Contributors