Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. The Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, London  N1 to 23 November 2024.

3✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Look Back with reservations.”

Presented in tandem with Arnold Wesker's Roots, which I have yet to see, Osborne's play, so ground breaking and exciting in 1956 – not at first actually, it took a little while - has not really stood up to the passage of time and this production in the round directed by Atri Banerjee seems to go against the grain of the play. It is about an angry young man, Jimmy Porter (Billy Howle) shut up in a claustrophobic flat with his wife Alison (Ellora Torchia), a colonel's daughter and socially his superior, and his best friend Cliff (Iwan Davies) who lives with them and with whom he runs a sweet stall. Jimmy is angry about his inablity to get ahead, about the whole class structure of the time, some of which he takes out on Cliff – the homoerotic tones there in 1956 seem far more obvious today – and his patient, long suffering, trapped at the ironing board wife. The trouble with the set – the play is done in the round with a circular section in the middle which can sink down and then bring up things like that ironing board from the depths below – is that you never feel they are trapped. They are in designer limbo. Howle rants effectively but Torchia simply is not a colonel's daughter, a middle class superior – she looks completely of today, a Briton of the present, while the arrival of her father, played by Deka Walmsley, fails to show just why Jimmy is so high on anger. He might be a manager of a building society but he is nobody's idea of an Army Colonel, Jimmy's behaviour to women – after Alison leaves him he beds their best friend Helena, played by Morfydd Clark, and consigns her too to toiling at the ironing board – is also a problem now. Today's Alisons would be far less passive. The play is of its time and its place and here neither comes across. One can admire Osborne's skill, relish Jimmy's language, be repelled by his behaviour but knowing that some of what he was complaining about has changed does weaken the dialogue no end. I am not arguing that it should be done as it was with Richard Burton or Kenneth Haig or more recently Kenneth Branagh,who originally, in the film, and not too long ago played the role, just that a play needs to be respected for what it ris ather than for what the director wants it to be. Looking back is one thing, trying to rework the play in the light of what was to come is what I have reservations about.

Cast

Billy Howle – Jimmy Porter.

Ellora Torchia – Alison.

Morfydd Clark – Helena.

Iwnn Davies – Cliff.

Colonel Redfern -  Deka Walmsley.

Creatives 

Director – Atri Banerjee.

Set Designer – Naomi Dawson.

Costumes – Tomas Palmer.

Lighting Desisgner – Leigh Curran.

Sound Designer – Peter Rice.

Movement Director - Imogen Knight.

Fight & Intimacy Director – Yavit Dor.