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LOOK BACK IN ANGER
1.John Osborne
1.1Biography
John James Osborne ( 1929, London, 1994, Shropshire) was a British playwright, film producer and screenwriter of the british Establishment. He was grown up in a humble family, his father was a publicity copywriter and his mother was a barmaid. At the age of twelve he lost his father and move to a minor public school with the money of the insurance. four years after that, he was expelled because of beating the headmaster. Then he came back to London and had his firsts experiences with theater. His full life had plenty of personal controversies: he got married five times before he died in 1994 from problems with his diabetes. As a playwright he did his first work in 1950, but it was six years after when he wrote his most popular play: Look back in Anger. He shocked the audience with the anger which defines the postwar generation, instead of that one of the “frivolous” english theater of the time. Characteristically, he includes his opinions about politics, religion, the modern society and other topics without fear of being polemic: he is considered the first English writer who questions the British monarchy. He always brought this topics with violent language, similar to the one the characters use when they argue with each other.
1.2 Other works
Before Look Back in Anger he wrote two plays: The Devil Inside Him (1950) and The Great Bear (1951). After Look back in Anger he wrote tens of works, not just plays, but also books and screenplays for TV and two films. His most determining plays are also The Enterteiner (1957), Luther (1961), Imposible evidence (1964) and A Patriot for Me (1965) and his last play Déjàvu (1992). He wrote some adaptations from works of other authors too, as for example A bound honoured (1966) original by Lope de Vega and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1975), original by Oscar Wilde.
1.3 His generation
John Osborne became a famous playwright during the fifties. Teen years after the end of the Second World War Britain had gone through a stage of economic and politic recovery. Then the young writers were interested in talking about the social life of the country ( explaining the problems of the daily life) and exploring other political tendencies out of the established order, with the point of changing it. This nonconformism is mainly caused because the promise of a welfare state after the war was generally unaccomplished. That’s why John Osborne’s generation is called The Angry Young Men. They feel frustration because after their fathers fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War the world keeps exactly the same because the bourgeoisie is still the ruling class. The fact that they don’t have this kind of fights in their time also makes them feel pointless.
- THE TEXT
2.1 Description of the text
The action takes place in the flat of Jimmy Porter and his wife Alison, in the Midlands. They are both young, around twenty five years old, like their friend Cliff who is with them almost all the play.The time in which it happens is the time when it was written (1959),in the first page there is a line that says “TIME: the present”. It could be represented as it was happening nowadays, despite a couple of details, as for example the fact that Jimmy’s father fought in the Spanish Civil War. The first act occurs in a early evening of April Alison and Jimmy had always had a conflictive relationship. Since the beginning he had a very bad relation with her parents, because they didn’t want their daughter to go with a low class man who had no future. This hatred is mutual, because Jimmy has always hated everything related with the rich people. Anyway he manages to marry Alison who broke contact with her parents, excluding letters, who is her only connection with people out home.They were both students in the University so they are well-educated despite that they have not a degree. After the marriage they left their studies and had no money, so they moved with Hugh, a very friend of Jimmy. Alison describes her life then as a nightmare, they had a rude behavior when they were with her. The most embarrassing for her was that they used to go to her upper class friends parties and
are fond of each other, but there is not more than that. Then they decide to go to church, but Jimmy feels very angry about his decision, because he doesn’t want his wife to do anything about religion, and he blames Helena for being a bad influence over her. They start arguing about Alison’s fathers and Cliff accuses Jimmy of going to far. Then he replies thar he is always angry for a true reason, that he has had a very difficult life. He tells them that when he was a young boy he had to stay aside his father while he was dying, And that that was something you can not understand unless you have go through it. He finishes his monologue saying that he has given everything he has to Alison, so she should not abandon him. She simply replies that she just needs a bit of peace. Then he leaves the Room, but Allison, Cliff and Helena keep discussing. Helena blames Cliff for doing nothing about the situation between Jimmy and Allison, but he replies that things have gone worse since she arrived. Helena decides that the best is to get on to Allison’s father, so he comes to pick her up out of that madhouse. Allison respects that decision. Then Jimmy must leave the town and go to London because Hugh’s mother is dying and she has no one around her because his son left England some years before. He asks Allison to go with him, but she denies. His father comes the next day and she packs her things to leave, for ever. Then she tells him everything she has gone through the last years, including Jimmy’s feelings about her parents. His father Colonel is not very surprised about it and admits that he should not interfere despite that he did jot approve Jimmy, or let her wife do it the way she did. She even hired private detectives to go after Jimmy, because she was sure that he had to be a criminal if he was trying to marry Allison. Then Colonel explains that he misses so much his life when he was younger and lived in the India with his wife, working in the British army. Before Allison leaves with his father Helena tells them that she is not leaving with them because she has another job the next day and she can not leave the city. Cliff comes back from the sweet stall and talks with Allison, and asks her to stay a little more just to explain Jimmy why is she leaving. She denies, but Helena gets the responsibility of telling everything to Jimmy. Instead of that she writes a note and signs it with Allison’s name. Then Jimmy comes back and gets really angry, he argues with Hellena, even insulting her. She tells him that Allison is going to have a baby, and Jimmy answers like if he didn’t care at all. She hits him and the last thing we see in the second act is them kissing each other. The action of the third act starts several months after the end of the second scene. Cliff and Jimmy are sitting in their armchairs reading the newspaper while Helena is ironing. the three of them are joking and talking about the things they read in the newspaper. Jimmy and Helena show
their love to each other, the only time when a disturbance can be perceived is when Hellena asks Jimmy to stop talking about politics or religion for one day. Helena leaves for a moment and Cliff announces to Jimmy that he is going somewhere else, because he wants to find a woman and start a new life out there. After that Hellena says to Jimmy that She loves him, and a bit after that Allison appears at the room looking rather ill. Then Jimmy goes to the room to play the trumpet and tells Hellena that a friend of hers has came to see her. Allison says that she has thought a thousand times to go there but she was never brave enough to do it. She is so sorry about appearing in that conditions, but Helena replies that she shouldn’t be sorry, because she is Jimmy’s wife and has more right to be there than her. They start discussing about Jimmy and they conclude that none of them should be with him, because no one would be happy that way. Allison tries to stop Helena, because she does not want Jimmy to be alone, so she thinks that he needs someone to take care of him. In that moment Allison also reveals that due to the stress she has lost the baby. Jimmy comes in the room then and doesn’t seem very surprised when he discovers it. Immediately after that Helena announces that she is going to pack her things and leave. Jimmy says that they abandon him because they don’t dare to fight for love, because it’s difficult and it carries lots of problems, despite that refusing to fight means to live like a Saint. Then He talks with Alison and they finish embracing each other playing bears and squirrels. The style of the language in this play is the typical of the realism. The characters talk in a very colloquial way, just like the low-middle class in his daily life.So, the author tells us about very realistic topics which affect him very deeply: love, marriage, the relations between human beings in particular and their relationship with the whole society. Other main characteristic of the play is that it always brings this significant topics from trivial situations. We see the main characters just talking about any banal new they have found in the newspaper and some minutes after they are taking decisions that will change his whole life, talking about the meaning of their life and what are their goals. The effect caused is that the audience feels identified with the play.
2.2 Structure of the text
The play is divided in three acts, all of them happen in the same room in Jimmy and Alison’s flat. The first act is just one scene. The second and third act are divided in two scenes. Between the action of the first and the second act there is a separation of two weeks. Between the second and the third several months have gone.
- Helena Charles: She is a well educated actress from an upper class family, young and beautiful. Alison is her friend, and she decides to stay in her apartment because she has to perform a play in town during some days. She appears for the first time in the second act of the play. At the beginning, it looks like Helena and Jimmy hates each other: He is playing the trumpet to bother her and she is convincing Alison to leave him. During all the second act she looks like a helper who has come to rescue Alison, but that role is proved false when it’s discovered that she loves Jimmy and starts a love affair with him. Despite that she betrays her friend, she feels guilty for it, and at the end she decides to leave Jimmy, although she loves him, she thinks that she is never going to make him happy.
- Cliff Lewis: He is Jimmy’s friend and his associate in the sweet stall business. He is welsh and has working class origins, like Jimmy, but he doesn’t feel the same anger about rich as he does. He shares the flat with Jimmy and Alison, but he also has his own bedroom in the same building. He has a very good relationship with Alison, it could be thought that they love each other, but they don’t make it happen probably because they both love Jimmy. He always defends Jimmy, excluding when he attacks Alison. At the end of the play he decides to leave the Porter’s flat because he wants to start a new life aside of Jimmy.
- Colonel Redfern: He is Alison’s father. He is an understanding man. He served in the British Army in India, and remembers his live there with nostalgia. Like Alison says, He is sad because everything has changed and Jimmy is sad because everything is the same. They are both considered men out of their time.
2.4 Placing on stage
The play was represented at London's Royal Court Theatre for the first time on 8th/05/1956. It was directed by Tony Richardson and the décor was by Alan Tagg. All the action takes place in the Porter’s flat. There is just one change in the decoration during the play: Alison’s personal belongings are replaced by Helena’s. The scene is described as a large
attic room with two small low windows. there is a door Up left, and most of the left wall is taken up with enormous window, and light comes from a skylight beyond. Most of the furniture in the room is simple and rather old. Up right there is a double bed and in the middle of the room two armchairs ( where Cliff and Jimmy are usually sit) and a dining table. There is also a wardrobe, a gas stove, and a food cupboard on wich is a portable radio. In most of the scenes Apart from the light form the skylight beyond, there is a few aspects to comment about the illumination:The room is full by the smoke from Jimmy’s old pipe and there is not too much light,because all the play happens in the late afternoon. Jimmy is dressed with a worn tweed jacket and flannels. Cliff wears a pullover and grey creased trousers. Helena’s clothes are described in the second scene as expensive, but in the third scene she is wearing Jimmy’s shirt like Alison at the beginning. This coincidence in the stage clothes creates the effect that Helena has replaced Alison. Most of the details in the stage (the furniture, the light and the clothes) assist to create a daily and realistic situation, making the audience feel more identified with the content of the play.
- REVIEW
3.1 Personal review of the play and the importance in its context
In my opinion, the play success in making the audience feel identified with the story and the characters. Look back in Anger shows that to make a love-relationship work you need much more than love, because conflicts between human beings go further than that. Reality hits “the Bears and Squirrels dream” that Jimmy and Alison created making their living together impossible: his dreadful character, the lack of money and a certain future, the conflict with her family… I found also very interesting the diverse feelings that Jimmy causes in the audience during the play. On the one hand, I started hating him because he treats his wife poorly, and always acts like an ungrateful and a villain. He acts selfish and even cruel, as for example when he discovers that he is going to have a baby and when Alison has a natural abortion. But after that it looks like he really loves her, so we start to see his inner conflicts. Specially at the end of the play when he explains that love is worth to fight for, we see that he is just a passionate man, a lover, who
