It is often said that this was an overnight sensation when it premiered in London in 1956. That is not entirely true, but it was different and certainly ground breaking theatre. Set in a cramped Midlands bed-sit and not in a Mayfair parlour it was a savage attack on the stuffiness of 1950s Britain’s pompous and patrician upper-class, a society Osborne’s lead character, the “angry young man” Jimmy Porter lashes out at as no longer relevant. Through its searing portrait of Jimmy’s marriage to the socially superior Alison, the play combines the sex war and the class war, in an environment of gnawing discontent and the agony of endless waiting. Look Back in Anger is blazing and immediate, a tour de force of vitality and language. In the words of the novelist Alan Sillitoe, a contemporary of Osborne: “John Osborne didn’t contribute to British theatre: he set off a landmine called Look Back in Anger and blew most of it up. The bits have settled back into place, of course, but it was never the same again.”
