Chicken soup with barley
By: Arnold Wesker
Publisher: Methuen Drama
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Number of pages: 76
Subjects: Socialism; Drama; Jews
Description: This landmark state-of-the-nation play is a panoramic drama portraying the age-old battle between realism and idealism. The kettle boils in 1936 as the fascists are marching. Tea is brewed in 1946, with disillusion in the air at the end of the war. In 1956, as rumours spread of Hungarian revolution, the cup is empty. Sarah Khan, an East End Jewish mother, is a feisty political fighter and a staunch communist. Battling against the State and her shirking husband, she desperately tries to keep her family together. Chicken Soup with Barley captures the collapse of an ideology alongside the disintegration of a family. The play, the first in a trilogy with 'Roots' and 'I'm Talking about Jerusalem', was first performed at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry in 1958.