From 1956 to the End of the Sixties

Abstract

The years of 1955 and 1956 are generally considered a watershed in twentieth-century English drama. In 1955, Waiting for Godot was performed at the Arts, directed by Peter Hall, and 1956 saw the visit of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble to London and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court. In their different ways, these productions seemed to offer ways of escape from the stifling routines of the well-made play. While Osborne’s play, considered revolutionary at its time, is now considered “fairly orthodox,”1 the impact of absurd drama and epic theatre was more profound and enduring. Waiting for Godot was a liberating experience for playwrights because it broke all the rules: there is no specified place or time, the characters do not seem to have a history or any psychological “depth” and, perhaps most importantly, the plot does not follow the traditional formula of “rising action — climax — falling action,” but after some time starts to repeat itself. Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble, by contrast, served as a model for a pronouncedly political, radical theatre, and on the level of theatrical style, suggested an escape from the confines of the well-made play by smashing the “fourth wall.”