Look Back in Anger
Jimmy Porter plays trumpet badly. He browbeats his flatmate, terrorises his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working class Hamlet, the original "Angry Young Man", is one of the most mesmerising characters ever to burst onto a stage; a malevolently vital, volcanically. articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England. A realistic portrayal of toxic masculinity and the impacts that irate tirades have on the ones we "love". First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in English theatre: stark realism to contrast the previous decades of escapism. Savagely, sadly and always impolitely, it compels audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life".
This is a half price offer. Tickets are $12.50 each (Full price $25)
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The stage lights revealed a meticulously detailed set that immediately created the atmosphere that transported the audience back in time to a post-war England with clearly defined class distinctions. Was the production a reminiscence of bygone times, a historical comment on working-class pride or just an attempt to revive a once revolutionary theatrical form? In any case, the actors tried their beat to convey the sentiment of a social environment that, today seems a bit dusty, emotionally distant. Though sometimes Alexander Loadman's "Jimmy Porter" achieved to convey the frustration and political homelessness of the character, he could have been more nuanced in his expression. Alison (Tamasin Mummery) could have also done with a bit more colour in living through her emotional turmoil caught between loyalty and defiant will to survive. The rest of the cast delivered their characters 'honest and upright' and contributed to a theatrical event that, at least, was a honourable homage to a time and situation that is long gone.