National Theater Broadcasts THE KITCHEN At Town Hall Theater

In Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, set in London in the 1950's, the entire stage is the kitchen of an enormous West End restaurant. A small army of chefs, porters and waitresses from across Europe - English, Irish, German, Jewish - struggle to keep up. The scene borders on chaos, and yet somehow the dinners get served.

"Fifteen hundred customers an' half of them eating fish. I had to start work on a Friday," says one waiter. In spite of the furious pace, a high-spirited young cook manages to strike up an affair with a married waitress, the whole time dreaming of a better life.

But in the all-consuming pressure of the kitchen, nothing is far from the brink of collapse.

Arnold Wesker's extraordinary play premiered at the Royal Court in 1959 and is now considered one of the great English plays of the last century. The Kitchen puts the workplace center stage in a darkly funny and furious examination of life under pressure, when work threatens to define who we are.

The National's production has won raves from critics. The Daily Telegraph calls is "a drama of daring ambition and technical invention...a compelling insight into what it is like to work in such a highly pressurised environment." All are praising the huge, complicated set, a brilliantly realized kitchen complete with boiling pans, burning gas jets and roaring ovens. The choreography of the large cast, placing orders and cooking complete meals with unerring precision, has been called the most brilliant staging the NT has seen for many years.

The National Theatre broadcast of The Kitchen will be shown at Middlebury's Town Hall Theater on Thursday, October 6, at 7 pm. Tickets are $17/$10 students and may be purchased at www.townhalltheater.org, 802 382-9222, at the THT Box Office (Mon-Sat, noon-5 pm) and at the door.