Look back in IRRITATION
Only thing missing from Gate’s self-admiring production of John Osborne classic is a sign saying: ‘Director at work – look, listen, admire’
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK Look Back in Anger Gate Until March 24★★★★★
Ican’t remember when I last saw a production as irritating as this one. The director, Annabelle Co my n obviously wants to show that John Osborne’s most celebrated play can pack as big a punch today as when it was first produced in 1956.
And it has ended up as a selfadmiring blitz of techniques beloved of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble: showing the audience the backstage workings, no pretence that Jimmy Porter is actually playing the trumpet, having the stage directions read out loud instead of just being performed and having them ignored anyway, along with speeches directed straight to the audience to show the play should not just be an external emotional experience. The only thing missing was a sign saying: ‘Director At Work – look, listen and admire.’
In 1956 the play was the inspiration for playwrights to write in a modern, brutally realistic style, invading the staid world of West End drama and dialogue that still had a ring of the ’20s and ’30s. But Look Back In Anger is an invigorating, not a great play. It’s an angry rant about social and cultural divisions, but it has no obvious political objective. Its reputation came from its shock effect.
Osborne had a great facility for hating almost anyone and anything. He described his fourth wife’s suicide as ‘the coarse posturing of an overheated housemaid’. And up on stage the self-pitying misogynist bully Jimmy Porter could be Osborne himself, spewing out the author’s savage critique of the English class system and everything he didn’t like. And yet Jimmy is no revolutionary, just a rebel similar to the Brando character in The Wild One, who when asked what he was rebelling against, replied simply: ‘What’ve you got?’
Jimmy almost seems nostalgic for a glorious past he had no active part in. In a line that might be a piece of Osborne self-criticism, Jimmy’s wife Alison says: ‘Don’t take his suffering away from him. He’d be lost without it.’ And she gets a line about her miscarried baby that anti-abortion groups would admire.
There’s a lot of rich dialogue and waspish humour in the play that provides a few strong dramatic moments, but too often the power and humour is killed by the monotone declamatory style of acting, especially by Ian Toner as Jimmy. Clare Dunne as his wife gives the most credible performance, and Lloyd Cooney as Jimmy’s lodger workmate Cliff has good moments, even if the relationship is a bit of a puzzle.