Arnold Wesker, a British playwright who drew on his heritage as a working-class Jew to create dramas that captured the dialogue and struggles of the common man, died April 12 in Brighton, England. He was 83.
The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said his son Lindsay Wesker.
Mr. Wesker, who wrote more than 40 plays that were translated into 18 languages, first gained prominence with a trilogy about the lives of Jewish socialist intellectuals: "Chicken Soup With Barley" (1958), "Roots" (1959) — which provided an early showcase for Joan Plowright — and "I'm Talking About Jerusalem" (1960).
He was known, together with writers including John Osborne and Brendan Behan, as one of the “angry young men” of the British stage in the 1950s — though he dismissed the label.
The playwright drew on his youth in east London, where conversation, argument and song were woven into the fabric of daily life. He loved the rhythms, the dialogue and the thirst for knowledge gained just by sitting around talking.
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“There were quarrels and they were upsetting, but in a strange way there was so much love around, it overshadowed the distress,” he told the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs” program in 2006.
Arnold Wesker was born in London on May 24, 1932. He never went to college but instead had a string of jobs that informed his writing, including bookseller’s assistant, farm laborer, kitchen porter and pastry cook, as well as service in the Royal Air Force in the early 1950s.
In the stiff, upper-class world of British drama in the 1950s, Mr. Wesker was part of a wave of new voices who took on all subjects, the "kitchen sink" of drama. Together with playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Mr. Wesker helped broaden the appeal of theater to a new generation.
His plays have experienced a revival of late, with “Chicken Soup” performed in 2011 at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Dominic Cooke, the Royal Court’s artistic director at the time, said Mr. Wesker understood theater “is always metaphorical, even when the social context of the play is realistic and detailed.”
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“In ‘Chicken Soup,’ for example, the gradually disintegrating family stands for the fading political idealism of the 20th century, but the daily life of the family on stage is brought to life with insight and honesty,” he said.
Mr. Wesker's other well-known plays include "Chips With Everything," based on his service in the RAF, and "The Kitchen," which draws on his days as a pastry cook. They were stories of ordinary people and real life.
The playwright’s work, often criticized as didactic, fell from fashion by the 1970s. Many of his later works were poorly received or did not get the critical due he felt they deserved. He could explode in unpleasant ways, often conspiracy-minded and tinged with allegations of anti-Semitism.
His personal life was also turbulent and, for a long time, he and his wife, Doreen “Dusty” Bicker, lived separately because of his extramarital affairs.
He was knighted in 2006 for services to drama. He wrote a memoir, "As Much As I Dare."
Survivors include his wife, Doreen “Dusty” Bicker, and their sons Lindsay and Daniel; a daughter from a relationship, Elsa Hastad. Another daughter from his marriage, Tanya Wesker, died in 2012.
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