The
Royal Court held a gala celebration on 6 May to mark the 50th
anniversary of the legendary first night of John Osborne's ground-breaking
drama. But the theatre, the dramatist's alma mater, curiously
declined to commemorate the play's (and its own) half century
with a full production and run of Look Back in Anger. That job
has been left to the Peter Hall Company which, in Bath, has mounted
Peter Gill's splendid new production. Better than any revival
of Look Back in Anger that I've seen, this absorbing account makes
you hang in a state of rapt expectancy on every scalding or scalded
word.
It does rich justice to the fact that the piece manages to be
many things at the same time - a dissection of a new social phenomenon
(Jimmy Porter, product of the 1944 Education Act, caught in limbo
between the class he's left and the class that won't accept him);
a Strindbergian marriage play; a strange kitchen-sink counterpart
to Waiting for Godot (in all that frustrated hanging around and
hints of time-killing music- hall routine; and a keen insight
into Osborne's troubled psyche.
The production's most striking innovation is the almost dream-like
subjective feel it gives to some of the sequences through lighting
changes and an evocative soundscape. The moody wail of a distant
jazz trumpet underscores Jimmy's lengthy tirades. The Colonel's
reminiscences of India are accompanied by the ghostly bugle of
his battalion band and the sound of steam trains. There's a strong
sense at such moments of people trapped by nostalgia, soliloquising
in their several solitudes.
This approach does not significantly detract from the drama of
marital warfare. True, Mary Stockley's moving Alison could afford
to emphasise more the passive-aggression in her stance behind
the ironing board. But Richard Coyle is superb
as Jimmy, a brooding sexy mix of bolshie mischief and angry hurt
who would leave most women confused as to whether they wanted
to slap, screw or mother him. As he puffs his pipe listening to
Vaughan Williams, you also see sly glimpses of the reactionary
buffer he'll become. And Rachael Stirling is excellent as a rather
camp, mannish, unconsciously machiavellian Helena, who seems to
be acting in her own interest as well as Alison's when she arranges
the latter's escape with daddy.
I hope that London will get to see a production that does Osborne
proud.
