Look Back in Anger

Synopsis

In an ordinary city centre flat, lives a young man with a dark anger inside of him, the clock ticks as he waits. This is the story of a complex mind in a too simple world, caught between loathing and love, he struggles to control the terrible destruction that boils within. 1950's drama dominated by the archetypal Angry Young Man, Jimmy Porter. In 1956 this play changed the course of British theatre and heralded the beginning of a renaissance.

Our Review:

3 July 2008

The fanfare surrounding the 50th anniversary of Look Back in Anger in 2006 also prompted a serious re-examination. While there was no doubting the place John Osborne’s kitchen sink drama, a riposte to the middle-class fare that then dominated the West End, holds in theatrical and social history, whether or not the play still retains any significant impact was another matter.

Two years after that milestone birthday, Alexander Gilmour, making his directorial debut, has reignited the Look Back in Anger debate with this new production. In a programme note, Gilmour recalls reading the play for the first time during protests over the Iraq War and finding that Osborne’s expressions of disgust with England’s post-war “inertia” and loss of empire after the Suez crisis encapsulated his own feelings about the country today.

It’s a valid comparison. Sean Holmes drew similar parallels last year in his 50th anniversary revival of a...

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