Jerry Harrington, the owner of Tivoli Cinemas in Westport, was so bowled over by the National Theatre of London's filmed production of the The Kitchen — which he broadcast last Sunday afternoon and will show again tomorrow night at 7 p.m. — that he sent out an e-mail raving about the production to his friends and followers last week.
"I was knocked out not only with the sheer theatrical virtuosity displayed on stage," Harrington wrote, "but by the cinematic sensitivity that I was seeing and hearing."
The Wesker play was first performed in England in 1959. But it so effectively captures the heightened tension and distinct personalities of the "back of a house" in a busy restaurant that it's perfectly relevant and spot-on today. The broadcast of the theater performance, which was filmed at a live performance in the Olivier Theater last month, begins, metaphorically anyway, as a ballet and ends as an opera. You know, like a real restaurant kitchen.
Anyone who has worked in a restaurant will be knocked out by the staging: Director Bijan Sheibani has mounted the play on a set that looks like an actual restaurant kitchen, with working gas stoves, steaming pots, stacks of plates and shelves of glassware, and constantly bickering chefs in starched white jackets.
It's the tempo of the first act that's remarkable. The show opens leisurely, with the prep cooks and dishwashers clocking in after dawn to start work. By the time the lunch shift is in full throttle, the restaurant crew is working at warp speed with the frayed nerves, broken dishes, and uneasy truce between cooks and servers that I remember all too well from my own restaurant experience. (I threw plenty of foot-stomping temper tantrums in too many kitchens over the years, so some of the kitchen interactions made me want to either laugh or cry.)
There's a melodramatic central plotline — a German chef is having a love affair with a married English waitress who has no intention of ever leaving her spouse — that ends with a bloody, operatic finale. It's a disturbing last act but perfectly believable. The cast began rehearsals cooking with real food — it's only implied in the actual performance — so that every gesture, every movement, is remarkably true.
The last local broadcast of the performance will be tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Tivoli Cinemas in Westport. Fat City would be interested to hear from restaurant-industry employees — past and present — who have seen The Kitchen and want to share their opinions in the comments.
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