ABSTRACT
Wesker’s most immediately popular play, Chips with Everything,,ostensibly deals with the national conscription which continued to be an everyday feature of postwar British life until 1963. Though written in 1960 and first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962, it draws on Wesker’s own two years’ service in the Royal Air Force in 1950–52, whose details he had pinned down at the time in lengthy letters home and an attempted novel. Part of the play’s strong impact derives from its precision about such details, particularly in the long, grinding parade-ground drills. To ensure accuracy, the first director John Dexter consulted a retired sergeant major, RSM Brittain.
