Look Back in Anger (John Osborne)

Now that I’m reasonably back into semi-full production mode (which I had a glorious four-ish months moderately off from) perhaps there needs to be some escape clause in my reading a play per day for tech week.

Look Back in Anger is a hard read in a good way. It presents a tense, tenuous situation which is all too real and far too uncomfortable for normal people to stand. We find ourselves in the unhappy marriage of Alice and Jimmy: in class-stratified 50’s Britain upper class Alice married low-class (but highly educated) Jimmy and things have gone downhill from there.

Jimmy is smart enough to dislike his station in life and applies his frustration to everything and everyone around him. He’s casually cruel, dismissive, doesn’t listen, and is unyielding in his opinions. Alice and Jimmy’s friend Cliff lives with them and he tries to keep the peace and absorb what blows he can. Osborne shows us just enough tenderness at different points to let us see what life must have been like before Jimmy let his worst parts consume him.

We learn that Alice is pregnant and concerned about whether she wants to abort the baby, raise the child without Jimmy, or bring the child into this tough situation.

During the second act Alice’s similarly high-stationed friend Helen stays with them while she’s working in town. Seeing Alice too timid to take action (or simply making a choice that Helen thinks is wrong for her) Helen confronts Jimmy and his worldview and calls Alice’s father to take her away. Here we see more of Jimmy’s passion turned towards something good (though still abusive) as he grieves the death of a friend’s mother (but ignores his own wife’s pain.) After Alice leaves Helen and Jimmy have a fight which turns steamy, as these things often do (not to me, but, you know, presumably to someone.)

In our final act many months later we find Helen in much the same position as Alice was at the beginning of the play, though things are a little worse now. Cliff isn’t as happy, Jimmy has a little more bite and a little less love. Alice returns, confused, Helen resolves to leave, now understanding a bit more why Jimmy is magnetic, and things end as they began in a sad, twisted situation.

As a Producer
As great as this play is it is far outside of what Pronoia wants to do. We are about the elevation of comedy and escapism and historically this play was written as a response against the escapism of the time.

As a Designer
It’s a period unit set, of an apartment. I’m sure exciting things can be done, but they’re not leaping out at me.

As a Writer
This play accomplishes the magnificent task of staying (largely) away from melodrama while still being intense and disturbing. Jimmy is almost unreal in his level of vindictiveness and pettiness, but there is always the tether that reminds you that there are people like this and you can’t ignore it.

In a world where we too often confuse understanding a villain with excusing one it is refreshing to see the power of a well drawn, awful character, whose redeeming qualities don’t need to be mythic in order to have sympathy and antipathy for him simultaneously.