Chicken Soup With Barley [Drama]

by Arnold Wesker

Sarah Kahn - Debbie Chazen

Harry Kahn - Elliot Levey

Ronnie Kahn - Joshua Ginsberg

Ada Kahn - Imogen Front

Cissie Kahn - Susannah Wise

Monty /Man - Joel Gillman

Hymie Kossof - Russell Bentley

Dave Simmonds - Dan Wolff

Prince Silver - Ashley Margolis

Bessie Blatt - Anna Spearpoint

Directed by Sally Avens

A BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4

Wesker's semi-autobiographical state of the nation stage play from 1956: The Kahns are communists, and the play traces their relationship with the party from the high of Cable Street, when working men and women successfully forced Mosley's parading fascists into retreat, to the low of Soviet tanks rolling into Hungary. It is only Sarah Kahn, the matriarch of the family, who idealistically clings to the party she has given her life to. As the rest of her family desert her she clings to her mantra: 'you have to care or you die'.

A family falls apart as its political faith disintegrates.

Arnold Wesker's play charts the collapse of an East End family over 20 years as their political ideals disintegrate; from the highs of Cable Street to the lows of the Cold War.

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