Look Back in Anger

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger is very likely the best-known and most influential British play of the 1950s, helping to set in motion parallel movements in theater, literature, and film known as the "Angry Young Man" movement, "kitchen sink drama," and the British New Wave -- all of which I've been exploring lately. In the past couple of weeks I've read Osborne's play and seen the two versions of it that are widely available -- Tony Richardson's 1958 film with Richard Burton, and David Jones's 1989 television broadcast of the celebrated Renaissance Theatre production, directed by Judi Dench on stage and starring Kenneth Branagh. (It is unfortunate that the 1980 Lindsay Anderson film with Malcolm McDowell, once available on VHS, hasn't surfaced on DVD yet.)

The 1958 film is important and worth seeing, but problematic, too. It was probably inevitable that a movie version would "open up" the play, but this is a one-set play with all the claustrophobia that implies, and the claustrophobic quality is largely lost in the film. Like most of the key British New Wave films, it is beautifully shot (in black and white by Oswald Morris) and well directed, worthy on its own terms, but if you are looking to understand the impact Look Back in Anger had in the theater, this would not be the place to start. Nigel Kneale's screenplay is a thorough re-writing of Osborne, with additional characters and sub-plots, and less of the cascade of language one finds in the play.

Richard Burton is surprisingly weak as the iconic Jimmy Porter, over-doing the odious side of the character, lacking in charm, and reciting the speeches as if memorized, not as if made up on the spot. The other actors are superior. Gary Raymond as Jimmy's buddy Cliff gives as perfectly pitched a male supporting performance as you will ever see. Claire Bloom takes the difficult role of Helena and invests it with as much believability as anyone could (but the conception of Helena and her role in the plot is the really glaring fault of the play). Mary Ure as Jimmy's wife Alison, repeating her role from both the original West End and Broadway productions, hadn't lost an ounce of freshness; her fragility touches a nerve and makes many of the important scenes between her and Burton more effective despite his studied approach. (Ure's own career trajectory as an actress, quite tragic, suggests a source for that fragility, but the important thing is, she could play it.)

The 1989 television version makes a marvelous contrast with the film. It is simply a rendering of the play, one set, small group of characters, and all. So the force of Osborne's dialogue is undiluted, and the sense of entrapment is powerful. Although the supporting performances are in general not as good as in the film, that is more than made up for by Kenneth Branagh's extraordinary take on Jimmy Porter. He outshines Burton in every possible way: he's got the charm, the on-the-spot inventiveness, that constitutes the magnetic side of the character; he is more convincingly intellectual; he is verbally and physically completely fresh and untrammelled. It is little wonder, based on this performance (which we are lucky to have preserved), why Branagh took the London theater world by storm in the Eighties: he is astonishing.

I'd like to say the same of Emma Thonpson as Alison, since I am a huge Thompson fan. Yet this is not quite her part. She acts the heck out of it, but knowing Thompson in her other roles as we do, it is hard to accept her as a put-upon woman who can't give back Jimmy's guff as good as she gets it. You could believe that of Mary Ure's Alison; she seemed endangered by life. Thompson can't shed her natural projection of firm character, of backbone, sufficiently to make a convincing Alison.