OLIVER SYKES reviews Atri Banerjee’s searing revival of Osborne’s 1956 classic, a reminder of humanity’s nihilistic impulses in the face of social displacement.
In the mid-twentieth century, the epoch defined by the catastrophes of modern invention and the Nietzschean death of the father—marked in the play by the death of the protagonist’s own father as a child—where does the next generation stand? In John Osborne’s career-defining nihilist masterpiece, he channels the rage of directionless twenty- to thirty-somethings lost within their own self-absorption. With no cause to fight for, they find themselves displaced, not understanding their place in a post-war world. As a solution, they fruitlessly rage against the social machine, bitterly rejecting social conformance. In the words cried by Alison (Ellora Torchia) in the final act: “I don’t want to be neutral, I don’t want to be a saint. I want to be a lost cause. I want to be corrupt and futile!”.
Naomi Dawson’s stripped-back, brutally expressionistic set reflects back on the Almeida Theatre’s surprisingly youthful crowd. Part of their “Angry And Young season”, the action takes place on a raised, red circular stage, as if the characters are operating in a boxing ring, the steps lining the stage covered with dirt. Only costume and occasional props—such as an ironing board, table or chair—give the piece any sense of location or period. The centre of the raised platform hydraulically descends, occasionally leaving a rounded pit in the middle of the stage. The set reflects both an atemporality and a sense of moral descent, the characters left detached from their social environments as they plunge into the central pit.
Such only lends itself further to the characters’ lengthy monologues. Billy Howle as the tortured, educated, “angry young man” Jimmy, and Morfydd Clark as the disapproving Helena truly shone for me. Helena enters the play seemingly as a foil to Alison, the sensible woman who has her life together, which only heightens her eventual fall into Jimmy’s grasp. Helena and Jimmy’s final scenes together, as Helena begins to enter the cyclical meaninglessness of Jimmy’s life, letting go of her sensibilities and toying with depravity, work seamlessly with the set. The two verbally and physically square off, circling each other in Dawson’s prize ring, until Helena also finds herself behind the same ironing board that Alison uses at the start of the play.
Ellora Torchia’s performance as Alison is detailed, and moving during moments of emotional intensity; but in her quieter monologues, she slips into the mode of a narrator. Her characterisation feels inconsistent in a way that the rest of the cast never does, and it leaves Clark to establish the subtleties in her parallels to Torchia’s character. The choice to change the play from three acts to two also feels somewhat misguided; it leaves act one feeling slightly over-extended, and the cyclical scene patterns Osbourne establishes less clear.
Whilst I think we now have answers to many of the postmodern nihilistic questions raised by the play—namely that everything in modern life isn’t meaningless, but rather that, if nothing holds meaning, then everything holds meaning—it nonetheless loses none of its potency. In an increasingly politically polarised climate, with extremist movements gaining traction, the Almeida implores us not to ignore the concerns of the displaced youth. There will always be “angry young men”, but to ostracize them can only lead to Jimmy-esque sentiments. Atri Banerjee’s adaptation of Look Back In Anger aligns the concerns held by today’s youth with those of the 1950s with ease and alarming prescience.
Featured image courtesy of Marc Brenner.
