Look Back In Anger

John Osborne's 1955 classic of the British New Wave has certainly aged. Fity plus years on the post-War, class conscious 'angry young man' aesthetic has lost much of it cultural immediacy. However, having said that Osborne's kitchen sink world of vociferous and clashing personas remains compelling. In this adaptation, director Jude Hansen has stripped much of the original bulk out of the play and distilled it into a neat and swift two acter. In doing this, however, he manages to maintain not only the thrust of the narrative but, more importantly, the volatile relationships at the heart of the play. By staging the show creatively in a minimally lit and somewhat austere space and keeping the whole affair very intimate, Hansen virtually places his audience in the lonugeroom. This amplifies the frequently painful human drama, as the verbose protagonist Jimmy (fuelled by a rage against middle class politeness) proceeds to lay seige to his wife Alison and destroy any semblance of domestic harmony. At times the show veers towards highly strung overstatement but in the main Hansen and his fine cast manage to keep the lid from blowing off the top. Osborne's masterpiece is a notoriously wordy and difficult beast and this production does a fine job of making it meaningful in 2009.