Look Back In Anger @ The Classics Theatre Project
—Jill Sweeney
Context is an important element in evaluating a play from an earlier era, but in the end, the work must stand (and compel) on its own. Speaking of Shakespeare in 1765, Samuel Johnson wrote that the Bard might now—at long last—be considered one of the greats, as “he has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.”
In 1956, John Osborne lobbed a grenade into the genteel tea party that was the London theater scene with his play Look Back In Anger, a grimy, gritty look at the malcontent middle class of post-war England. Anger made the sedate, upper-class, intellectual plays of Terence Rattigan and his ilk feel dated overnight, and ushered in the “kitchen sink” movement in British theater.
The Classics Theatre Project’s production, starring artistic director Joey Folsom and directed by TCTP resident artist Jackie L. Kemp, boasts a talented and energetic cast who more than do justice to Osborne’s best-known piece. But does Anger, at nearly 70 years out from its premiere (and closing in on Dr. Johnson’s 100-year test), have the artistic staying power to speak to modern audiences? On that, opinions may well vary.
Jimmy Porter (Folsom) is unhappy (About? Whaddya got?), and when Jimmy’s unhappy, he likes to spread it around. To his long-suffering wife Alison (Devon Rose), to Welsh lodger and amateur marriage counselor Cliff (Braden Socia), to his wife’s actress friend Helena (Rhonda Rose), and the list goes on. The quintessential and original “angry young man,” Jimmy is educated and well-spoken (in more than one way: Folsom’s accent work is excellent, as he skillfully allows Jimmy’s working-class accent to break through his acquired “posh” dialect in moments of anger or stress), but he’s disaffected/disconnected too—a bear with its leg in a trap.
“You’re hurt because everything’s changed,” Alison says to her father, Colonel Redfern (Frances Henry), a sweet, bewildered relic of a bygone age, “and Jimmy’s hurt because everything’s stayed the same.”
Folsom plays Jimmy with a lovely combination of languor and viciousness in the play’s first act as he wanders restlessly around the run-down flat, lambasting Alison (played with aplomb, and a believably plummy accent, by Devon Rose) first for her unbearably bourgeois family, then growing more personal and more cutting. Women come and go as the play continues, affairs begin and end, and all the while Jimmy struts and frets much more than his allotted hour on the stage, crying piteously to Alison, “Doesn’t it matter to you what people do to me?” when he feels particularly put upon. Jimmy and Alison eventually seem to reach a sort of nihilistic détente with one another, but given what we’ve seen, it’s hard to care, or to invest much hope that life will improve for the couple.
There’s not a weak link to be found in TCTP’s production, and the accent work ranges from credible to excellent. While Folsom’s Jimmy naturally takes up most of the air onstage, Devon Rose’s Alison is beautifully understated, impassively enduring her husband’s barbs until pushed too far, and falling spectacularly to pieces in the play’s final moments.
Socia’s Cliff is a lovable doof who wants everyone to get along, played with just the right air of melancholy to give the character more weight. Much is asked of Rhonda Rose as Helena: the play’s undercurrent of misogyny comes out most strongly with this character—who, for a moment, brings out a warmer side to Jimmy’s character—and Rhonda Rose does as well as anyone could in creating a grounded emotional journey for Helena. Even Frances Henry, in his one scene, brings a sweetness and pathos to Alison’s father, a soldier who went off to war and, after, found no home waiting for his return.
Contemporary response to the play landed on both ends of the spectrum. While many of the London mid-century critics despised it, their dislike was mostly grounded in disdain for the subject matter, i.e, Ick, why are you making us watch poor people onstage? Yet the critic’s critic of the day, Kenneth Tynan, wrote that he “could not love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger.” He called it “a minor miracle” that contained “all the qualities…one had despaired of ever seeing on the stage—the drift toward anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of ‘official’ attitudes, the surrealist sense of humor…the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned.”
Strong words, beautifully written, and let’s face it, no critic wants to come down hard on a play that’s sometimes been called a masterpiece. But decades later, does this play pack a punch for a modern audience? Does it speak to our moment in time, and will it meet Johnson’s test for artistic immortality? Whatever side of the debate you land on, the fact remains that it’ll be hard to find a more respectful and engaging production of Osborne’s landmark piece than The Classics Theatre Project’s production, running through April 9th—if the play’s your cup of tea, this is a cuppa to savor.
WHEN: Through April 9
WHERE: Margo Jones Theatre, Fair Park
