LOOK BACK IN ANGER Taken from The Observer Written by Kate Kellaway Performance at Theatre Royal, Bath Published August 27th 2006 'Jimmy's still got a problem' Jimmy Porter has a love-hate relationship with looking backwards in Look Back in Anger. He is tempted, he says, to manufacture nostalgia for an era (Edwardian) that he never experienced, yet he sneers at his wife, Alison, for 'looking forward to the past'. Alison thinks Jimmy is living in the wrong time. Living in the present seems to be beyond both of them. This year, Look Back in Anger is 50 years old and there is no temptation to feel nostalgic about it. Its emotions have not dated. If it were set today, the ironing board might not be allowed to be a central character - Jimmy would be doing his shouting in crushed clothes - but Peter Gill's fresh, bracing production reminds us this is as much psychological as social drama - and it remains a complicated, self-critical self-portrait of John Osborne. Richard Coyle's wonderful Jimmy exudes the quality he furiously misses in others: enthusiasm. This Jimmy has a smiling, good-looking glee, an attractiveness even at his most insanely destructive. Mary Stockley's Alison is more vivid than usual, too. She knows the uses of silence. Rachael Stirling as Helena is a pleasingly worldly contrast, dressed in executive black and white. Her good manners acquire an ever more aggressive edge. But it is, I fear, only wishful thinking to imagine that a modern-day Helena might have reformed Jimmy instead of being seduced by him. Richard Harrington's sympathetic Cliff is a hider-behind-newspapers, a nice chap - a blunt knife in a dangerous kitchen. Ronald Pickup's Colonel Redfern is a nicely judged mixture of pomposity and remorse. The set is classier than usual (as you might expect in Bath). This is unsqualid kitchen-sink drama with grey beams overhead and a nicer-than-average leather armchair in which Jimmy may slump or writhe. I liked the fluidity of Gill's direction: the swarming domesticity of it, the conversations to the rhythm of opening and shutting of cupboards and the brewing of countless pots of tea. And the play seemed more powerful than ever and more tragic, a reminder that angry eloquence is not the same as being able to communicate. BACK TO MAIN REVIEWS PAGE Copyright © 2001-2005 RICHARDCOYLE.COM All Rights Reserved