ABSTRACT
The first of Arden’s plays to be performed professionally in the London theatre was The Waters of Babylon. It was given one Sunday-night production-without-décor at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1957. At that time, the Royal Court, under George Devine, was giving a new impetus to British drama, first by having persuaded a number of established novelists to write for the theatre, and secondly by having discovered Look Back In Anger. Set in a Midlands bed-sitting room, and full of angry tirades against the establishment, John Osborne’s play was seen partly as a protest against British society, but partly, too, as a reaction against the artificiality of British theatre. Two years later, the Royal Court’s big success would be Roots, the play in which Arnold Wesker, with tape-recorder accuracy, reproduces the surface reality of life in a Norfolk cottage.
