ENGLISH THEATRE OF XIX AND XX
CENTURIES GROUP A
SURNAME: Giarratana NAME:
Melania
JOHN
OSBORNE
LOOK BACK IN ANGER
A Play in Three Acts
Faber
and Faber, 1957, London, UK
The cast of this play
is made up of five characters, which are, in order of appearance: Jimmy Porter,
Cliff Lewis, Alison Porter, Helena Charles, and Colonel Redfern. Jimmy and
Alison are married and share the flat with Cliff, who is also Jimmy’s
workmate; all of them are in their twenties. We see them in a large attic room,
wearing every day clothes and living their every day life, but from the beginning we are able to understand that Jimmy is an
irreverent man whose marriage is not going very well and he is not satisfied of
his life. In fact he often tries to fight or to
discuss with Cliff and provokes his wife with his aggressive way of talking to
them.
Cliff seems to be in
love with Alison and they both seem to be constantly the victims of Jimmy.
Jimmy comes from a
working class family, while Alison is upper class: this is not accepted by
Jimmy, who hates all Alison’s friends and her family. All of them seem not
to be satisfied with their lives. Colonel Redfern is Alison’s father, a
sixty-year-old man who has never liked Jimmy but has resigned to his daughter
will. Helena is
Alison’s best friend who also hates Jimmy, but behaves ambiguously
because throughout the play has a love relationship with him.
The plot of the play
is simple and complicated at the same time: it is simple because the characters
act in their every day lives, but it is complicated because the author makes us
think about how hard it is to relate ourselves to the other human beings. In
the first act Jimmy, Cliff and Alison alternate between strong discussions and
funny moments during an early evening in April and at the end of the act Alison
receives a call from Helena who is arriving at their home and is supposed to
stay a few days. Jimmy gets angry. The second act is developed two weeks later,
Helena is still
living with them, and her bad relationship with Jimmy is made quite evident by
their frequent discussions. Alison confesses to Helena that she is pregnant and
Helena calls the Colonel Redfern who goes to pick Alison up; in the mean time
Jimmy goes out and then he goes back home, Alison has just gone away; he starts
saying bad things about his wife and Helena tells him that Alison is pregnant;
Jimmy gets angrier and angrier, and the act ends with a kiss between him and
Helena. The third act is developed several months later after the second one
and it starts with the same scene as the first one but now Helena has replaced Alison: Sunday afternoon,
Jimmy, Cliff and Helena are in the room. Throughout the act Alison goes back
home, she lost her baby. Helena
decides to go away because she understands that it is not the right place to
be. Alison and Jimmy talk for a while and return together.
The language used by
the characters is quite colloquial; above all, Jimmy uses also many bad words.
All the play is placed
in the Porters’ house and there are few references to the outside world,
we just see the characters going out and coming back home.
Of course the play
reflects the late fifties society, with all its contradictions. The main social
theme is the big distance among the different social classes in that period,
which can be adapted also to ours day, even if we are supposed to be more
open-minded than before.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
John Osborne “Look Back in Anger”
Auto-evaluation: Notable
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
López
© Melania Giarratana
megia@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia
Press