In 1956, John Osborne shocked theatergoers with his examination of the Britain’s angry young men coming out of the post World War II years. These were the blue-collar lads with ability, some with education, but all missing the key to a better life in the white-collar stratum of society. There is more than a hint of relevancy to the current economic troubles and explosive frustrations.
In Sam Gold’s current revival of Look Back in Anger at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater, Osborne’s anti-hero, Jimmy Porter (Matthew Rhys), is intelligent but impoverished, hopeless and resentful. He lives in a drab attic flat in the English Midlands with his wife, Alison (Sarah Goldberg), whom he degradingly calls “pusillanimous.” As she endlessly irons his shirts, Alison is the main target for Jimmy’s misogyny and his vindictive diatribes that also includes popular art, the politics of the day, welfare, newspapers and Alison’s middle-class family. With them lives Jimmy’s longtime pal, Cliff (Adam Driver), who helps him run his candy store. His demeaning name for the loose-limbed oafish Cliff is “mouse.”
As the three pass the tiresome Sunday afternoon, Jimmy restlessly paces, complains, and verbally attacks both Cliff and particularly Alison. Andrew Lieberman’s set is effectively narrow, crowding the three into a drab gray, narrow claustrophobic line. A mattress leans against the wall, trash is thrown around the cluttered pieces of furniture. Alison is planted near the stove and ironing board.
Occasionally, Cliff flirts with the weary wife and she responds, ostensibly playfully but with an erotic undercurrent. Nearby, Jimmy simmers, sneering at Cliff’s boorish adolescent behavior and his wife’s meekness, building to an imminent explosion. His on-and-off boyish roughhousing with Cliff adds to the feeling of a volcano about to blow. Later this day, the three are also expecting a visit from Sarah’s friend, Helena (Charlotte Parry) whose visit brings on a cruel game change of musical chairs.
Matthew Rhys, best known in TV’s “Brothers and Sisters,” is compelling as the bully with a brain. His volcanic eruptions are unacceptable, yet he is handsome enough to be a plausible lure for the beautiful Alison. Goldberg’s Alison effectively evokes the stoic endurance reminiscent of TV’s “Mad Men’s” January Jones, yet Sam Gold’s re-imagined production eliminated much of the back story that throws light on the reasons why Alison originally ran off with Jimmy. Why she remains with him and his misogyny and tirades is difficult for women today to accept.
Charlotte Parry as Helena offers a glimpse of the well-dressed, confident woman Alison used to be. Driver’s Cliff adolescent brutishness is fitting as another element caught in the middle of this hellish home.
Look Back in Anger is not easy watching, for while it has been cut, it still demands endurance for its restless fury and cruelty. However, driven by Gold’s demanding pace on Lieberman’s creative set, Rhys’ portrayal of the complex Jimmy and the other performers’ layered characterizations, this production delves believably into a gritty window of society that extends past the ‘50’s to the present.
