Customer Reviews

Look Back in Anger (Faber Paperbacks)

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You'll never meet a more unique character than Jimmy Porter, a 20-something British Archie Bunker. He's filled with rage at the absence of ... something ... and spews forth venom, sarcasm and utter misery relentlessly. Sounds horrible, right? Well, it's fascinating. I couldn't put it down, and I'd like to see the current revival of the play in NYC. I've seen a few people like Jimmy Porter, people who have so much potential, energy and creativity, yet for one reason or another it's all squandered. They fail to surround themselves with people of equal passion, and the result is that they hurt the ones around them, who are more at peace with themselves. The question is, how does someone so young get this way?

Writer John Osborne presents in Look Back in Anger an antithesis to the `drawing room dramas' of the period by writers such as Noel Coward which were popular in the 1950's. These dramas often featured polished and wealthy characters from the middle and upper classes, at their leisure within their homes and drawing rooms. Such plays fuelled what one newspaper reviewer from `The Express' termed as the `Illusion of Comfort' which pervaded the 50's.

After reading or watching Osborne's play no one can argue that he was under such an `illusion'. The play can be seen as a reaction both against the `drawing room' dramas and the general society which they represent. Rather than a drawing room with wealthy characters, Osborne selected as his setting a cramped and dismal one attic apartment and filled it with rough down and out lower class characters that were in so0me cases seen as uncivil for the theatre. Their language was coarse, their setting was harsh but worst of all to the original audience of this play (which no doubt had drawing rooms of their own) these characters presented to them a world which was uncomfortably realistic. It is this realism which may account for the fact that many viewers initially did not like Osborne's play as they did not like the world that it presented.

Jimmy Porter, the eternally angry young man who believes that he has life potential beyond being a sweets salesman is frustrated by the notion that he is never given the opportunity by society to fulfill this potential, he can never pull himself up from his social position, he is effectively `stuck.' The sense of being trapped in a monotonous cycle that he cannot break free of is reflected in the setting of the play, the fact the entirety of the action occurs within the small and confining attic/ apartment, and that each of the three scenes opens in an identical fashion further underlines the notion of monotony, of being static. Jimmy (like most of a whole generation) where raised on socialist principles yet when this generation emerged into the real world, they frustratingly discovered that the class system was still intact. Look Back in Anger explores this frustration, the agony of being promised potential (through things such as Jimmy's university education) and then to have that potential snuffed out by a society which is not yet ready to let go of its class hierarchy.

No doubt many readers will find this play disturbing or at the very least depressing, as the notion of being trapped in a dead end job or a situation where ones potential is not being fulfilled or even recognized is a common fear in modern society. Even though Look Back in Anger is very much so a play of its time, the themes that it traverses still has resonance in contemporary society, one only has to take note of the number of university educated waiters and barman to draw a modern analogy or parallel.

"Look Back in Anger", first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1956, is often cited as marking a theatrical revolution. The British theatre of the early fifties, dominated by playwrights like Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, was widely regarded as genteel, well-mannered and middle-class. John Osborne's play can be seen as a deliberate reaction against those values. Its plot is conventional enough. It centres around the stormy marriage of a young couple, Jimmy and Alison Porter, who separate after a series of quarrels. Unknown to Jimmy, Alison is pregnant at the time, and he starts a relationship with her best friend Helena, an actress. Six months later Alison, having lost her baby, returns, and Helena ends her affair with Jimmy so as to allow the couple to be reunited.

What was shocking about the play was its social setting and the attitudes displayed by the characters, especially Jimmy. He is from a working-class family and, although he has a university degree, has turned his back on the sort of well-paid white-collar job that such an educational background would normally have led to in the fifties, working as a trader in the local market, running a sweet stall with his friend Cliff. He and Alison, with Cliff as a lodger, live in a dingy bed-sit in a large Midlands town. Alison herself is from the wealthy upper middle classes (her father is a retired Indian Army officer) and her family resent her marriage to Jimmy.

It was in the late fifties that the term "Angry Young Man" was coined by the critics to describe not only writers such as Osborne, Kingsley Amis and John Braine, but also their characters such as Jimmy Porter and Amis's Lucky Jim, who were seen as the mouthpieces of their creators. Jimmy is, to borrow the title of a famous film of the period, a rebel without a cause.

In another Osborne play from around the same period, "An Epitaph for George Dillon", the hero, himself a playwright, is advised by his agent to cut out the long speeches from his latest play, which are seen as being "too Bernard Shaw". This is not advice which Osborne took himself, although the passionate, emotional "Look Back in Anger" is very different in style to Shaw's plays, which at times can read like extracts from the proceedings of a debating society. Jimmy gives vent to his feelings in a series of long, angry speeches. (As Osborne himself was to point out, there is something formal about these speeches, which he likened to operatic recitative).

In these speeches, Jimmy attacks the state of British society, and often takes the opportunity to have a go at Alison and her family (especially her mother) whom he sees as part of the traditional British ruling class. He is instinctively suspicious of any form of authority and of the establishment. He is hostile to religion and to the growing "never had it so good" conservatism of fifties Britain. He does not, however, himself really subscribe to any alternative system of values such as Communism or Socialism. A frequent theme of his complaints is that there are no longer any good causes to fight for; he envies his parents' generation who could fight the anti-fascist battles of the thirties and forties. (His father was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War).

Jimmy's relationship with Alison is a complex one, perhaps best expressed by the cliché that they can neither live with one another nor without one another. On the one hand, the differences in their personalities and their social backgrounds is the cause of constant friction between them. On the other, they have a deep emotional need for one another, shown by their game of "bears and squirrels". To an outsider such as Helena this is mere sentimental whimsy; to them, it is a way of expressing their mutual love.

One reviewer complains that Osborne had a "tin ear" for dialogue and quotes some of Helena's lines in support of this complaint. The problem lies not with the playwright's "tin ear" but rather with the fact that some people have tin voices. There are plenty of people in Britain, especially from Helena's upper-middle-class stratum of society who speak in precisely that stilted, formal tone of voice as a substitute for feeling. In the fifties there were probably even more.

Although it had enthusiastic supporters such as the critics Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, "Look Back" was highly controversial when it was first produced, being too shocking for many critics and theatregoers in the fifties. Today it has largely lost its power to shock, kitchen-sink realism, bad language and anti-establishment opinions having become commonplace in the theatre over the last fifty years. Nevertheless, when well produced its emotional power and sincerity mean that it can still be an impressively memorable experience in the theatre.

Osborne, the great so-called radical, grew to be a reactionary, full of ideas about 'England' and her past glories. He aged into the image of what his protagonist Jimmy Porter ranted against. Should we be surprised, or was Jimmy Porter headed in this direction? Everyone, according to Jimmy, is a fake, but who would embody the real thing if he were to come along? When were things better, if today is so bloody awful? Playwright David Hare created a female version of this type of nasty negativity in his play "Plenty," about the sour ex-spy who couldn't adjust to post war life, also known as peace time. She had had the time of her life passing messages and getting knocked up on quick overnights to France. Too bad the war couldn't have been prolonged for her entertainment. Jimmy and Hare's Susan deserve each other. Most American parents have met this sort. At about 13 most kids get grouchy and start hating everything and everybody. It was brilliant of Osborne to have introduced the middle-aged tantrum-thrower to the theater, it must have been thrilling theater back in the day, but does it hold up? After five decades this sort of dim-witted, passive disgruntlement grows terribly stale. As for theater, my sense is that Noel Coward will fair better in the history books and, more importantly, on the stage. In fact, the sort of theater Osborne criticized has come back strong. The fact is that by growing into a caricature of himself, he only proved how witless and vapid his stage character has always been. He was a paralyzed blow-hard, a wind bag.

Saw the branagh/thompson/dench DVD version of this play at 24, and again just now at 44. It has not lost any of it's brutality for me, but a 20 year separation has made a vast difference in my view of it. The first time I couldn't really understand why Jimmy was so brutal, or why Allison was so withdrawn and passive. As far as these two go, the play isn't so much about social classes per se, as the way social class distinctions can cut us off from the empathy that we need to be able to give and receive. Jimmy and Allison's problem(s) are exactly the same problem. The end of the play proves it for me, and I could see the light bulb go on for each of them.

"Look Back in Anger" is about a young man, Jimmy, a working-class stiff/passionate philosopher. Jimmy treats his wife and best friend, Cliff, terribly, and in real life he would be insufferable, but on paper (and on stage, I'm sure) he's pretty engaging. His dialogue was well-written, but when it came to the other characters, author John Osborne has a real tin ear. Here's a young woman, Helena, advising Jimmy's wife to get out of the marriage:

"Alison, listen to me. You've got to make up your mind what you're going to do. You're going to have a baby, and you have a new responsibility. Before, it was different--there was only yourself at stake. But you can't go on living in this way any longer."

Perhaps this would sound convincing in the hands of a skilled actress, but on paper it reads like a bad translation. The play is full of excerpts like this--Osborne is also one of those writers who clumsily inserts exposition into the mouths of his characters, often.

The play is best and most shocking when Jimmy's brutality is on full display. I'm sure some readers see him as a romantic character, and this idealization may account for the play's acclaim. It is not bad, but I think it's overrated.

Look Back in Anger is an autobiographical play by John Osborne. The main character is Jimmy, a miserable young man. He rants and raves through the entire play, verbally abusing everyone he comes in contact with and taking delight in making them miserable as well. He has no redeeming characteristics at all (unless one wants to say he is "honest" with his feelings), and ranges from detestable to pathetic (his lame attempts at "bears and squirrels" cutesy talk with his wife, for example).

Why is he so angry? How is it that such a person has not one but two women fall in love with him and leave all for his sake? What is the point of people sitting through this? Apparently, none of these questions require more than superficial explanation.

A number of elements in the play feel contrived. I understand that for the stage you have limitations, but here we have a friend of the family hooking it up with Jimmy not five minutes after his wife leaves him. Sure, okay.

Contrary to what many reviewers of Osborne's day claimed, The dialogue is sub-par and stilted. Every character continually shares his innermost feelings in a hostile environment where they are constantly belittled.

Every character in the book is miserable on some level. No doubt this was extremely cathartic for Osborne, but it's just unpleasant for everybody else.

NOT RECOMMENDED

This book is great. Jimmy Porter is a very complex character. By the end of the first act you will still be asking why his wife would want to be with him. Sensational!

This play is one of the greatest of the 1900's. I've worked with the play for about three years (both as an actor and director) and I never get tired of it. Although Jimmy is a very difficult role, it is very rewarding to work with him and the other characters. It has actually changed my life! For the better!

I love books that talk about reality and this is a good one. As to me