British playwright Arnold Wesker came to prominence in the 1950s with stark dramas about working-class life. Many of his works were influenced by his childhood in a leftist Jewish family in London.
Wesker shot to fame as one of the wave of British playwrights spearheaded by John Osborne and John Arden. His three most renowned works made up what became known as The Wesker Trilogy: Chicken Soup With Barley (1958), Roots (1959) and I'm Talking About Jerusalem (1960). The trilogy plays were steeped in the socialism of Wesker's childhood, hymning mass education and attacking fascism. They also reflected his experience of London and life outside it.
Beatie Bryant, a character in Roots, was inspired by Doreen Bicker, a chambermaid who Wesker met in Norwich, where he was working as a kitchen porter. He gave her the nickname of Dusty, because of her "gold-dust" hair. An Arts Council bursary of £500 covered the cost of their marriage in 1958.
Wesker became known for his social optimism. Later, he was to move towards lyricism, with monologues in smaller venues, and then further into the personal.
Critics lauded Wesker’s epics and, although the plays were seen to be occasionally didactic, they were praised as realistic celebrations of working-class life. They presented areas of Britain that had never been seen on the stage.
The Kitchen (1959) is a reflection of Wesker's time spent working as a pastry chef in the Paris restaurant Le Rallye. It points to the dehumanising effect of highly pressurised, underpaid labour, and in her 1967 Paris production Ariane Mnouchkine presented it as an attack on capitalism. Chips with Everything (1962) attacks the class system, ending provocatively with the national anthem before a seated audience conditioned to stand for God Save the Queen.
Wesker’s texts were revolutionary for their time. He was the young, working-class Jewish writer, lionised by a middle-class theatre in a state of flux. He rejected the label of “angry young man”, saying of this period that he was “a happy young man”. There was money, there was recognition, there were audiences hungry for his work but, as he was soon to admit, he would become an angry old man.
Born in Stepney, he grew up in Spitalfields, in a working-class family. His Yiddish-speaking parents influenced his development as a self-taught writer, and inspired the Kahn family, in his trilogy.
In 1948, he started what was to be a long line of jobs, saving up to study at the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
In 1959, Wesker was named the most promising playwright of the year by the Evening Standard. A single-act version at the Royal Court that year of The Kitchen was followed in 1961 by a full two-act production and a film version by James Hill. Alan Bates and Diane Cilento had roles in Wesker's West End success The Four Seasons (1965), and Their Very Own and Golden City (1966) starred Ian McKellen.
However, in the next decade Wesker suffered several professional catastrophes. The Journalists (1972), set on a Sunday newspaper, an epic, with 30 characters, was offered to the Royal Shakespeare Company and David Jones was to direct. It went into rehearsal, but, amazingly, the actors refused to perform it.
Wesker was furious. He wrote widely in the press attacking Trevor Nunn, the RSC’s artistic director at the time, and filed a suit claiming £25,000 damages. The case dragged on until 1980, when Wesker was awarded damages of £4,250, winning the battle but not the war. In 1981 Wesker was still writing lengthy articles about his disappointment.
Despite his early success, by 1997 his new work was still on the margins: When God Wanted a Son had its premiere at Hampstead's tiny New End theatre. This play hinted at what was happening in his own life. As a result of Wesker's affairs, Dusty and Wesker were estranged and Wesker went to live in Wales.
Although he never joined any political party, Wesker was clearly of the left. As he wrote in his autobiography, As Much As I Dare (1994), the Jewish youth movement Habonim was his only political involvement apart from a few teenage months in the Young Communist League. He joined the antiwar group Committee of 100 and, after a demonstration, was imprisoned with Bertrand Russell.
Wesker was a European self-made intellectual who refused to flatter the theatre elite. Had he learned diplomacy, his career might have suffered less. However, had he sought to please he would never have written texts that were so challenging to the dominant English historical narrative. His distinctive achievement lay in reminding audiences that Jews are an essential part of British history and in presenting a vibrant working-class dynamic that was radical for its time.
He was welcomed back in his later years, and in 2006 was knighted. He was happy to return to the top table, but angry that his later work was neglected by a new generation of directors.
He had three children with Dusty: Lindsay, Tanya and Daniel. He also had a daughter, Elsa, with a Swedish journalist, Disa Håstad. Towards the end of his life, he lived peacefully with Dusty at their home in Hove, East Sussex. Tanya died in 2012.
Wesker is survived by Dusty and his three other children.