Review

TITLE: Look Back in Anger

VENUE: LBT

REVIEW BY: Barry Gibson

JIMMY Porter is angry with the world.

Highly-educated and highly-disaffected, he stews in his tiny flat with wife Alison and friend Cliff.

Jimmy’s cruel rages filled the Lawrence Batley Theatre on Tuesday night. Played excellently by Bill Ward – formerly builder Charlie Stubbs in Coronation Street – Jimmy spat venom at the world and his wife.

It made for intense and uncomfortable viewing, particularly his cruel and sometimes violent tirades against the long-suffering Alison.

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne was at the forefront of a wave of “kitchen-sink dramas” when it was first performed in 1956.

The play challenges the genteel world of traditional English theatre with a story of sad, broken lives. Rather than some grand drawing room, Look Back in Anger takes place in a cramped Midlands flat occupied by three people who love and loathe each other in equal measure.

The switching between banter and finger-pointing kept the audience engaged in this Northern Stage production.

It was anything but glamorous, but Tuesday’s performance was certainly gripping, as Jimmy launched into one tirade after another, sometimes challenged by Alison and Cliff, sometimes left to rant wildly at the world like some attention-starved child.

Osborne’s play brilliantly captures the alienation and disappointment of Jimmy’s life – how his education far outstrips his achievements in life.

Perhaps, in these times of economic gloom, Look Back in Anger is more relevant than ever.

Performances tonight, tomorrow and Saturday. For more information call 01484 430528