Private Rooms and Public Spaces

Abstract

The enthusiasm with which events at the Royal Court Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, were seized upon in the mid to late 1950s had a dual edge to it.2 It was provoked by the emergence of a considerable wealth of new writing talent certainly, but the rush to acknowledge this new talent served to underline the general sense of malaise that permeated the British theatre. Whilst there was no general agreement on the import or significance of the work of writers such as John Arden, Brendan Behan, Shelagh Delaney, Ann Jellicoe, John Osborne, N. F. Simpson and Arnold Wesker, almost desperate attempts were made to force these and other writers into some kind of movement. But what was undeniably apparent was that something was happening and that, for better for worse, a concerted attack on the entrenched values of Shaftsbury Avenue theatre was being mounted.