Look Back in Anger - Stagetext (Harrogate) February 22, 2007

Look Back in Anger

Playwright: John Osborne
Producer: A Harrogate Theatre and Oldham Coliseum Co-Production with Pilot Theatre

Jimmy Porter and his wife, Alison, are holed up in a dingy bedsit with their friend, Cliff. Claustrophobic in a world beyond his control, Jimmy’s only respite is intermittently lashing out at the two of them to escape his wearisome existence. With the marriage at a crisis point, their self styled ‘nut-house’ echoes to the sounds of banter and battling, until Helena arrives…

In an atmosphere charged with tension and fraught with frustrated energy, this emotional and powerful work is both an extraordinary portrait of post war Britain and a love story for its time.

John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger expressed a youthful frustration at the post-war Establishment never before seen on stage, and is often regarded as the pivotal work of the century. More than fifty years later, the questions it raises about Britain’s identity are ringing alarm bells louder than ever.

Look Back In Anger was voted into 4th place in the Royal National Theatre’s Most Significant Plays of the Twentieth Century.

“The play has lost none of its anger and none of its dramatic power; theatre doesn’t come more deeply felt”
Mail on Sunday

Directed by Marcus Romer