Look Back in Anger (Penguin Plays) - Softcover

Osborne, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140481753 ISBN 13: 9780140481754

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1982

Synopsis

Jimmy Porter, frustrated and bitter in his drab flat, lives with his middle-class wife, Alison. Also sharing the flat is Cliff who keeps things tenuously together. Alison's friend Helen arrives and persuades her to leave Jimmy only to fall for him herself. When Alison becomes pregnant, Helen leaves the couple. This play originally opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956 and has since proved to be a milestone in the history of theater.

About this title

About the Author:

John Osborne (1929-1994) was a British playwright whose 1956 drama Look Back in Anger helped change the face of British theater in the 1950s. In the 1990s, the Writer's Guild of Great Britain awarded Osborne a lifetime achievement award. Osborne’s other successful stage works include The Entertainer, the Tony award-winning Luther, Inadmissible Evidence, and A Patriot for Me.

Review:

Play in three acts by John Osborne, performed in 1956 and published in 1957. A published description of Osborne as an "angry young man" was extended to apply to an entire generation of disaffected young British writers who identified with the lower classes and viewed the upper classes and the established political institutions with disdain. Although the form of the play was not revolutionary, its content was unexpected. On stage for the first time were the 20- to 30-year-olds of Great Britain who had not participated in World War II and who found its aftermath lacking in promise. The hero, Jimmy Porter, has reached an uncomfortably marginal position on the border of the middle class, from which he can see the traditional possessors of privilege holding the better jobs and threatening his upward climb. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0140481753
• ISBN 13: 9780140481754
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96